Among Others

See this review and others at my blog: http://lazerbrain.wordpress.com

Among others is at heart, a coming of age story. Jo Walton herself characterized it as a woman's intellectual coming of age story. Mori (short for Morwenna), is fifteen years old and has run away from her crazy witch of a mother (no, she is actually a witch) not too long after the untimely death of her sister Mor (short for Morganna). We meet her after she has been through a children's home and is meeting her Father, who left her mother just after the girls were born, for the first time. The book follows Mori over a few month period in which she deals with being an outcast, her evil witch mother, faeries, boys, coming to grips with the death of her twin, and a squishy kind of magic that doesn't have any clear rules or laws, all through the ideological lens created by the great sci-fi and fantasy books of the late 70's and early 80's.

There is really only one or two things about this novel that I didn't like. The biggest, I think, has to do with the character of Mori. Walton's characterization is definitely first rate (which I may get to later), so my quibble is not with that, but I had this nagging feeling that Mori was too pragmatic, too sensible in thought and action for any 15 year old that I have ever known, (or been, I suppose). By pragmatic, the most obvious examples are the way she thinks about sex and homosexuality, and the way she thinks about class and class division. It feels like Mori is constructed to be an ideal fifteen year old by today's world's standards, and then put back into the early 80's. I just had a little trouble believing it.

The second thing is that I was disappointed that I had not read a lot of the books mentioned in Among Others, even though I consider myself fairly well read in sci-fi and fantasy. To put a finer point on, I think book was meant for those who love fantastical fiction and grew (or at least read widely during) the 70s and 80s, not someone like me who has read widely in the late 90's up to today. Anyway, that being said, I have read Lewis, Tolkein, some Zelanzy, some Heinlen, some LeGuin, some Vonnegut etcetera. But apparently not most of the ones that are mentioned in the book. I guess I'm really just sad that there is at least one layer to Walton's book that is currently inaccessible to me.

So I wrote much more on the negatives than I meant to . . . The positives are much more numerous, but I honestly don't think I'm going to have time to treat them all appropriately.

Probably the best praise that can be given to a book is verisimilitude, Among Others positively reeks with it. I don't usually associate fantasies with verisimilitude, but if faeries and magic did exist, Walton does a pretty convincing job of telling me what it might look like. I love how the faeries are somehow more natural, they are sometimes beautiful, but most often strange yet believable if incomprehensible. And I love the way the magic is squishy; it doesn't have rules per se and there is no ways to be certain that magic was being used, because its effects can be easily rationalized away.

I guess this is kind of a counter to my critique of Mori's character. One of Mori's defining characteristics is pragmatism and clarity of thought regarding “real” life. Walton beautifully sets this up as both contrast and complement to the fantastic elements of Mori's life. Consequently, the main flaws in all of “the real world” based characters are highlighted. While the majority of the characters are totally in the “real world”, they have an utterly unpractical and fantastic outlook on life, regarding what things are important in life, such as class, sports standings, etc.

Walton brilliantly uses magic and fantastic literature to inform Mori's relationships throughout the book, which provides new perspective on old themes Here are a couple of examples. Fantastic literature is used as an escape from the reality, because the reality is almost unbearable for Mori, at least until she meets the SF book club. Also, talking about SF books with Daniel serves as both a way to connect with her estranged father, and a way to keep him at a distance so that Mori doesn't have to ask him hard questions, and her father doesn't have to answer.

Finally, I really enjoyed how Walton gave Mori some serious emotional baggage. Not just the obvious stuff, like the crippled leg, loneliness and dealing with the loss of her sister, but she is so used to getting shafted by life that she feels guilty when good things happen to her. Another example is her relationship with Wim. She feels guilty about the whole korass thing, and so tells him about it and then she gets worried that he is only hanging out with so he can see the faeries!

In summary, this book was fantastic. If you like character driven books as opposed to plot driven, you just have to read it. Even while a bit unbelievable, Mori is such and interesting character that if you don't get to know her through this book, you are really missing out.