Among Others
Author- Jo Walton
Hardcover
Page Count: 304 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: January 18, 2011
ISBN-10: 9780765321534
ISBN-13: 978-0765321534
Before I give my thoughts on this book, I have to make myself extremely clear: I honestly didn’t think this was going to be “my cup o’ tea”. The peachy cover seemed (at first glance) to be something I wouldn’t usually read. But then I took a closer look. Jo Walton, World-Fantasy award winning author of Tooth And Claw, is a unique and respected author of the speculative fiction field, and even though I’ve never actually read her work personally, I felt I would be missing out on something. It also contained a fair amount of good words from authors such as Harry Turtledove, Cory Doctorow, and Patrick Rothfuss. And blurbs like that never lie.
At first glance, Among Others doesn’t seem like a normal case involving anything remotely spec-fic, or indeed, any hint of science fiction or fantasy. Morwenna (Mor for short) is a Welsh teen trying to fit in a foreign English boarding school, who has trouble keeping up to her schoolmates from a leg that hasn’t healed right since a peculiar accident took place. She is trying to fill in the missing halve of her heart which her deceased twin used to occupy. She is attempting to make a connection with a wealthy (though trying) weakling of a father whom she has finally met after all these years. It all seems pretty stereotypical; a social drama of a teenage girl fitting in. On another level, it’s more than that. It is a novel of faeries and fairy tales, witchcraft and wards, and how the lines of reality and magic blur in her life. It is a love letter to books, showing and most importantly proving how powerful an effect literature has on our lives, and how it touches and remains with us through the unpredictability of life. Jo Walton writes a wonderful story, and furthermore, a story about stories. It is a story that grows on you; even though it starts off slow, it stays with you for the strong empathetic quality of the main character, and sticks by your side like a close friend. The reason the text is so extraordinary is that it speaks to many people about many different things, regardless of their backgrounds. I found myself uncannily on par with most of Mor’s opinions, and at times I genuinely shared her inner world of insecurity and yearning for normalcy. The only way she can try to understand the world she lives in is to escape to another, as thoughtful journal entries sing her healthy obsession of books: “It doesn’t matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.”
She just spoke to me on so many different levels, and her contemplations in the almost-biographical format is genuine, quirky, and eerily relatable. I’ve heard comparisons to Graham Joyce’s The Tooth Fairy (if comparisons are your sort of thing).
The magic itself is somewhat indistinct; it crosses between both the metaphorical and the physical planes as it interacts with Mor’s life in unexpected ways, changing her perception on how the world works and what it could end up messing with. Thankfully, it doesn’t become too big a part of the overall story, but more plays a tune in the background while the story stays believable. One even wonders if there is a tangible magic in there, perhaps only on a metaphorical level, or if it even exists at all, since it is just so cleverly implemented into the realistic simplicity of the writing. The beauty of speculative fiction (and just reading in general) is how it aims to change our view on things, or learn something that we hadn’t thought about before to look at something in a new light. This aspect is always acknowledged in Among Others, and Walton doesn’t waver from the main theme of the novel: the love of the books. She gives continuous nods to the science fiction / fantasy grandmasters of her time as we go along, and also draws on her background of reading through many Nebula and Hugo classics to litter references throughout the avenue of the book. It gives a legitimate personality to Morwenna, a person that is honest and clearly well read. The voice of the protagonist sticks to Walton like a second skin. She isn’t writing Morwenna; to me, it is as if she is scribing for her, exactly how she would want it to be written.
Among Others is a tale of self discovery and growing up that stands to have one of the most relatable and organic main characters I’ve ever read. With books as her guiding lantern, and words as her shield, this is the story of a girl who uses speculative fiction to navigate through the revelations and complications of life, and reminds us all of how reading touches our lives. Frankly, this novel is magical.
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