Review - Among Others
Because Jo Walton is rapidly becoming one of my favourite writers, and because I loved this book, and because this is a new book and I think people should buy it, here is my review of it, all on its own, immediately I've finished the book.
I tried to write this review without spoilers, but it depends on what you consider to be spoilers. I think it's a book based more on characters than events, and I don't think knowing some of the events will spoil the whole, but you might want to exercise a bit of caution...
Among Others (Jo Walton)
Among Others feels like a book written just for me. The protagonist, Mori, is Welsh, disabled, synaesthetic, listens to folk music, reads SF and fantasy (reads anything and everything)... She says, early in the books, that, "It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books." She speaks casually and without bigotry about LGBT people, thinks about religion, and thinks positively -- at least mostly so -- about sex. She's at an English school, a private school with traditions and expectations and such a very middle class air. And her world is a world with room for all of this, for everything we know in our everyday lives, and also for magic.
It's a book written after the climax of the story, really. Mori's fantastical adventures have come to their climax, and now she has to live with the consequences. She says that it's like life after the Scouring of the Shire. And she does have huge consequences to live with: she has her own injury, and the death of her twin sister, to come to terms with.
It's a book about an ordinary girl, in many ways, and most definitely about an ordinary world. Magic comes through the cracks, but most of the time Mori has to live with things just the way we all do, catching buses and trains, and being excited about the latest books by her favourite authors coming out. And about being attracted to boys, too -- though in many ways this book is as much a love story about a girl and the interlibrary loan system as it is about a girl and a boy. It's a book about books, as much as anything else, maybe more than anything else. Mori talks about everything she's reading, often with astute comments about it all. I want to find and read some of these books, and try to find the same magic in them as the protagonist of Among Others does.
There were two things I didn't connect with as well, and they don't detract from it enough to deduct a star, even though they seem to be the things I have the most to say about. One is that the final confrontations feel very abrupt. Part of that is Mori's matter of fact narration, and part of it is that it does come up very suddenly, after a lot of "real world" concerns and preoccupations -- it seems to jar against the rest, there. I would almost prefer the book without closure, without climax, because it is a story written after the world didn't end, and Mori is living with the consequences.
The other thing, which I think is well articulated by this review, is that Mori's mother is a complete stereotype of a neglectful, mentally ill mother. As I said to that reviewer, part of that could be that Mori is only just learning about shades of grey -- it is in the last fifty pages or so that she says that children are better tools for fairies because they don't see in shades of grey; for most of the book, she doesn't see in shades of grey, she is in the process of learning to do so. Mori sees the world in the way it might be seen in children's fantasy -- a point she makes for herself about Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising (although she is somewhat wrong: there are shades of grey in that sequence, too) -- where things are black and white, and there is a definite bad guy. She's fifteen years old, not an adult yet, and she is just growing toward a more nuanced view of the world. So I think it is partially that which informs the portrayal of her mother, and there are some subtle things, maybe that you only see when you know them from the inside, that hint at Mori's fears and the things her mother has done to her. The ones that I mentioned to the other reviewer are what particularly struck me: the way she disguises taking a book from the shelf, fearful of her mother's knowing, and also the way she says that she makes sure not to give anything away (at school), because it will be used against her. Those are thought patterns you get from being bullied/abused, in my experience.
At the same time, it takes work to see the potential subtleties in the portrayal of Mori's mother -- it's all too easy to just take Mori at her word, and it is discomforting to wonder about how much of that is intentional and how much is just internalised by the author.
Overall, though, I loved the book. I read it with my teddy, Helen, at all times, because it felt somehow wrong to read something that spoke to my teenage self without her -- this book really felt written for me, and I could talk about it for hours, if given the chance. One of my favourite things, though, was the very last line -- it feels almost bathetic, and yet at the same time, so perfect for Mori, so perfect for the story, and so perfect for me. The whole book was immensely easy to read, and I wish I'd been able to just set aside a few hours and blast right through it -- most of what happens in it is just ordinary life, but Mori's voice is well done and it's all quite magical, even the parts that aren't meant to be, because there's magic in reading and talking about reading and reading about reading.
Stuff here is posted first to Dreamwidth. I won't disable comments here, but I prefer to receive comments on DW. Go here to do so. If you need a DW invite, ask. There is a tutorial on how to set up your OpenID here. If you comment anonymously, please sign your comments!
I tried to write this review without spoilers, but it depends on what you consider to be spoilers. I think it's a book based more on characters than events, and I don't think knowing some of the events will spoil the whole, but you might want to exercise a bit of caution...
Among Others (Jo Walton)
Among Others feels like a book written just for me. The protagonist, Mori, is Welsh, disabled, synaesthetic, listens to folk music, reads SF and fantasy (reads anything and everything)... She says, early in the books, that, "It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books." She speaks casually and without bigotry about LGBT people, thinks about religion, and thinks positively -- at least mostly so -- about sex. She's at an English school, a private school with traditions and expectations and such a very middle class air. And her world is a world with room for all of this, for everything we know in our everyday lives, and also for magic.
It's a book written after the climax of the story, really. Mori's fantastical adventures have come to their climax, and now she has to live with the consequences. She says that it's like life after the Scouring of the Shire. And she does have huge consequences to live with: she has her own injury, and the death of her twin sister, to come to terms with.
It's a book about an ordinary girl, in many ways, and most definitely about an ordinary world. Magic comes through the cracks, but most of the time Mori has to live with things just the way we all do, catching buses and trains, and being excited about the latest books by her favourite authors coming out. And about being attracted to boys, too -- though in many ways this book is as much a love story about a girl and the interlibrary loan system as it is about a girl and a boy. It's a book about books, as much as anything else, maybe more than anything else. Mori talks about everything she's reading, often with astute comments about it all. I want to find and read some of these books, and try to find the same magic in them as the protagonist of Among Others does.
There were two things I didn't connect with as well, and they don't detract from it enough to deduct a star, even though they seem to be the things I have the most to say about. One is that the final confrontations feel very abrupt. Part of that is Mori's matter of fact narration, and part of it is that it does come up very suddenly, after a lot of "real world" concerns and preoccupations -- it seems to jar against the rest, there. I would almost prefer the book without closure, without climax, because it is a story written after the world didn't end, and Mori is living with the consequences.
The other thing, which I think is well articulated by this review, is that Mori's mother is a complete stereotype of a neglectful, mentally ill mother. As I said to that reviewer, part of that could be that Mori is only just learning about shades of grey -- it is in the last fifty pages or so that she says that children are better tools for fairies because they don't see in shades of grey; for most of the book, she doesn't see in shades of grey, she is in the process of learning to do so. Mori sees the world in the way it might be seen in children's fantasy -- a point she makes for herself about Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising (although she is somewhat wrong: there are shades of grey in that sequence, too) -- where things are black and white, and there is a definite bad guy. She's fifteen years old, not an adult yet, and she is just growing toward a more nuanced view of the world. So I think it is partially that which informs the portrayal of her mother, and there are some subtle things, maybe that you only see when you know them from the inside, that hint at Mori's fears and the things her mother has done to her. The ones that I mentioned to the other reviewer are what particularly struck me: the way she disguises taking a book from the shelf, fearful of her mother's knowing, and also the way she says that she makes sure not to give anything away (at school), because it will be used against her. Those are thought patterns you get from being bullied/abused, in my experience.
At the same time, it takes work to see the potential subtleties in the portrayal of Mori's mother -- it's all too easy to just take Mori at her word, and it is discomforting to wonder about how much of that is intentional and how much is just internalised by the author.
Overall, though, I loved the book. I read it with my teddy, Helen, at all times, because it felt somehow wrong to read something that spoke to my teenage self without her -- this book really felt written for me, and I could talk about it for hours, if given the chance. One of my favourite things, though, was the very last line -- it feels almost bathetic, and yet at the same time, so perfect for Mori, so perfect for the story, and so perfect for me. The whole book was immensely easy to read, and I wish I'd been able to just set aside a few hours and blast right through it -- most of what happens in it is just ordinary life, but Mori's voice is well done and it's all quite magical, even the parts that aren't meant to be, because there's magic in reading and talking about reading and reading about reading.
Stuff here is posted first to Dreamwidth. I won't disable comments here, but I prefer to receive comments on DW. Go here to do so. If you need a DW invite, ask. There is a tutorial on how to set up your OpenID here. If you comment anonymously, please sign your comments!