Among Others
Jun. 13th, 2020 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearAmong Others by Jo Walton has been on my reading shelf for a long time and I final got around to it this week. It's a beautifully written and absorbing read, for all that very little actually happens and a great deal of the text is taken up by discussions of the varying merits of 1970s science-fiction authors.
The book is the diary of Mori, a fifteen-year-old girl, who has recently lost her twin sister in an accident that has left her with mobility issues and in constant pain.
The blurb on the back tells us that the accident had something to do with Mori and her sister trying to stop their mother completing some kind of dark magic ritual, but this isn't made explicit in the text of the novel for quite some time.
Mori can see and sometimes communicate with fairy creatures that live in and around the ruins of abandoned industrial works, but most of her attention is taken up with trying to survive at a boarding school she is sent to by her remote aunts and estranged father.
Without the discussion of magic, this could be any other 'teenage outsider coming into an established community' story - and it's possible to interpret the book as all the magical elements actually being in Mori's head, as her way of dealing with her grief and the loss of her sister.
Regardless, this is a study in grief and loneliness, as well as an exquisitely drawn portrait of a young woman trying to find her tribe.
It's quite an odd narrative, in that there isn't much in the way of direct action, but the building of the various relationships is compelling, even if the digressions about Mori's obsessive reading habit become a bit overwhelming as the book goes on. I was at least familiar with the names of most of the many authors mentioned, though I'm not familiar enough with all their works for the mass of references to have significance for me.
The book is the diary of Mori, a fifteen-year-old girl, who has recently lost her twin sister in an accident that has left her with mobility issues and in constant pain.
The blurb on the back tells us that the accident had something to do with Mori and her sister trying to stop their mother completing some kind of dark magic ritual, but this isn't made explicit in the text of the novel for quite some time.
Mori can see and sometimes communicate with fairy creatures that live in and around the ruins of abandoned industrial works, but most of her attention is taken up with trying to survive at a boarding school she is sent to by her remote aunts and estranged father.
Without the discussion of magic, this could be any other 'teenage outsider coming into an established community' story - and it's possible to interpret the book as all the magical elements actually being in Mori's head, as her way of dealing with her grief and the loss of her sister.
Regardless, this is a study in grief and loneliness, as well as an exquisitely drawn portrait of a young woman trying to find her tribe.
It's quite an odd narrative, in that there isn't much in the way of direct action, but the building of the various relationships is compelling, even if the digressions about Mori's obsessive reading habit become a bit overwhelming as the book goes on. I was at least familiar with the names of most of the many authors mentioned, though I'm not familiar enough with all their works for the mass of references to have significance for me.
