Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

The transition from pre-teen to adult is a time of fantastic possibilities. A child goes from viewing the world at the waste level of his parents to matching them or, sometimes, towering over them. Adolescents uncover new abilities every month as they master music, sports, or human interactions. Young girls metamorphize into swans with the capacity to make boys stutter and create life. Anything is possible at this time. They might think that today I can break the five-minute mile; perhaps tomorrow I will fly.

On the other hand, these changes upset the established order of childhood. The adolescent leaves the security of home and has to find ways to fit into new, different, and uncomfortable societies. They deal with strangers who don't affirm or love them as their parents and siblings have. They experience conflict. They find that their new capabilities mark them out for jealousy and ostracism.

These are the features of life that define Young Adult (“YA”) fantasy. The universality of these experiences is why YA fantasy is perpetually popular. Dystopian Science Fiction series like “Divergent,” “Hunger Games,” and “Red Rising” play on these elements in the themes of selection, competition, and training.

Fantasy also utilizes these universal experiences to tell stories about escape and acceptance. The classic trope is the outcast who goes through a door or falls through a hole into another world where the protagonist learns the new rules, masters them, and finds success and acceptance.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire takes the fantasy tropes and flips them. She asks what happens to those children who return to the real world after their journey to the fantasy world. Would they forget their experience and thrive in the real world? Or would their experience make them forever pine for the world they've lost?

McGuire paints the picture of those students who have been rejected by their fantasy world but cannot stop looking for a way to return. They are heartbroken and disconsolate. They lost a place that accepted them for their unique characters and shaped them like origami trees to fit into the fantasy world, whether it be the Halls of the Dead or Candy Land or a Hammer horror film.

The protagonist in Every Heart a Doorway is Nancy. Nancy found a doorway into an “underworld” of silence and solitude. She learned to play the role of a living statue. Color was forbidden to her. As cold as her world sounds, Nancy loves it and wants to return to it. She hates the real world where she is forced to wear colorful clothes and go out into the sunlight.

I liked the premise. The story itself is scant and short. It turns into a murder mystery when the mutilated bodies of students are discovered. This feature shows up around halfway through the book and drives the book to its conclusion. Through this conflict, we meet other students and found out about their adventures. A lot of these worlds sound truly bizarre. The twins Jack and Jill lived in a world where Jill was the pet of a vampire and Jack apprenticed to a mad scientist. Although this world is a nightmare, they want to return.

One of the things that I noticed and found disturbing was that the situation of a number of girls would be deemed “unhealthy” in our culture. Nancy is trained to be a living statue, totally passive. Her self-esteem is based on the approbation of her “master,” the Lord of the Dead. Her deepest desire is to return to a reality where she will stand for days, perfectly motionless, barely breathing, not talking, a passive object.

Is this really a fantasy of adolescent girls? Perhaps it is compared to the cruel competitive world of teenage girls.

Jill was the pet of a vampire. She provides this bit of information:

“Jill laughed. “I don't wear these because I want to remember where I've been. I wear them because the Master liked it when I dressed in pale colors. They showed the blood better. Isn't that why you wear white? Because your Master liked to see you that way?”

That these are ideals for any teenage girl seems....disturbing.

This is part of a series on the “wayward children.” I think it could be an interesting read for a few books until it inevitably becomes repetitive. McGuire can develop the worlds that she has been hinting at. Her division of fantasy worlds into “High Logic” and “Nonsense,” “Virtue” and “Wicked” offers an interesting premise for future stories.

This is a slight book without a lot of content, but it was still entertaining.