Chefs don't have time to write. While I was working on Smoke and Pickles, I was running a restaurant — a daily regimen of testing recipes,...
Continue »
JanG, January 21, 2012 (view all comments by JanG)
This is an amazing book, and I wish I had had it to read when I was 15. The story of a 15 year old girl who had gone through some very rough times and discovers science fiction as a comfort, as I did at 15. The book is a tribute to the power of literature, and refers to many of the best - and a few of the worst - science fiction and fantasy books of the past several decades.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (6 of 12 readers found this comment helpful)
alchymyst, September 30, 2011 (view all comments by alchymyst)
I love, love this book. If you are sci-fi/fantasy reader, this is a book for you. It's about the magic of books and reading. I was inspired by it to read and reread many sci-fi classics.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (4 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
In Among Others, the focus is less on fantasy and more on the magic of books and reading.
We went down the hill to the bookshop, sort of automatically, as if that's the way our feet wanted to turn. I said that to them.
"Bibliotrophic," Hugh said. "Like sunflowers are heliotrophic, they naturally turn toward the sun. We naturally turn toward the bookshop."
It is 1979. Mori is a Welsh teenager who has run away from her crazy mother and as a result has been sent to live with her father in England. She attends a boarding school, where she is very much the outcast, and fills her journal with discussions of books and authors and wistful wishes for friends. When she joins a book club at the local library and finds kindred spirits among other readers, she finds a new joy in life.
Written in the first person point of view, as a journal, the lyrical and well written prose of Among Others is a joy to read. Walton has great talent at turning an ordinary world into a magical one through her descriptions and narration.
All the discussions of authors that I've read and not read was also a delight. I laughed over discussions of books familiar to me, hearing myself in those discussions. Furthermore, I've now got a list of others to read, based on Mori's insights, that I might not have read otherwise.
Oddly enough--I am a fan of fantasy fiction--the fantasy element was difficult for me to enjoy. Walton painted her world so real and mundane, that when the fantasy elements were interjected, it felt like an imposition, as if she had torn apart the fabric of this world and sewn in a piece from another world. It didn't mesh properly. For me, the magic was Mori's life in books. The fairy magic almost seemed pretend, and I honestly felt cheated at times when the story moved from the "real world" discussion of Mori's friends and fiction addiction to Mori's dealing with the paranormal.
I wouldn't recommend this book across the board, to all bibliophile or all fantasy/sci fi readers. I think it's only going to find it's niche with those who are both devout bibliophiles as well as being fans of sci fi and fantasy novels.
This was my first time reading a novel by Jo Walsh, but it certainly will not be my last. If her other novels are as well written, I may have found a new favorite author.
mulliner, January 22, 2011 (view all comments by mulliner)
The gushing reviews that are springing up everywhere are right. This is a wonderful novel. I fell in love with the voice, which reminded me of Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle". It's a precocious 15 year old's journal, as she navigates the confusions of adolescence, darkened by her sister's death. She's lost her home with her extended family in Wales, and is living in an English girl's boarding school, with holidays at her father's house — the father that she just met for the first time. Her world includes fairies, and magic, and Walton does an amazing job of making that both believable, and at the same time making it feasible for it to be all in Mori's imagination. Mori is confident and analytical. She turns that analysis on herself, what she sees around her, and the books she reads.
She adores books, especially SF and fantasy. This book is a love letter to librarians, to interlibrary loan, and to SF fandom. She mentions all the books she's reading, with wonderful comments on them. It conjures up the wonder of discovering books as a child, if you were one of those kids. Someone needs to make up a bibliography of all the books mentioned (and I'm quite sure that someone will.) While many of the books she mentions are SF or fantasy, not all are. Others that come up include Josephine Tey, Mary Renault, Plato, Shakespeare, and T. S. Eliot. She is thoroughly steeped in SF, though. When she has nightmares, and wakes up terrified, she uses the litany against fear from Dune, and it works.
I love Mori's observations:
About she and her twin sister when they were eight years old and immersed in Narnia and Elidor: "…we were always looking for someone else to play with, preferably a boy, because in books that's the group you have to have to go into another world."
On meeting a classmate at a record shop: "She was looking at a record called 'Anarchy in the U.K.' by a group called the Sex Pistols. It was a very ugly cover, but I am quite interested in anarchism because of the 'Dispossessed'."
Because this has gotten so much good press, so fast, there are spoilers all over the internet. I recommend reading it before venturing onto too many blog discussions. Once you have read it, do followup. The additional information I gleaned about some of the characters set off all sort of interesting new ideas.
Product details
304 pages
Tor Books -
English9780765321534
Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"World Fantasy Award — winner Walton (Tooth and Claw) turns the magical boarding school story inside out in this compelling coming-of-age tale. Welsh teen Morwenna was badly hurt, and her twin sister killed, when the two foiled their abusive mother's spell work. Seeking refuge with a father she barely knows in England, Mori is shunted off to a grim boarding school. Mori works a spell to find kindred souls and soon meets a welcoming group of science fiction readers, but she can feel her mother looking for her, and this time Mori won't be able to escape. Walton beautifully captures the outsider's yearning in Mori's earthy and thoughtful journal entries: 'It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.' Never deigning to transcend the genre to which it is clearly a love letter, this outstanding (and entirely teen-appropriate) tale draws its strength from a solid foundation of sense-of-wonder and what-if. (Jan.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright PWyxz LLC)
"Review"
by Margaret Flanagan, Booklist,
"With a deft hand and a blazing imagination, fantasy writer Walton mixes genres to great effect. Elements of fantasy, science fiction, and coming-of-age novels combine into one superlative literary package that will appeal to a variety of readers across age levels."
"Review"
by Cory Doctorow , New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother,
"A hymnal for the clever and odd — an inspiration and a lifeline to anyone who has ever felt in the world, but not of it."
"Review"
by Robin Hobb, New York Times bestselling author of Assassin's Apprentice,
"If you love Sci-Fi and fantasy, if reading it formed your teen years, if you do remember the magic you used to do, if you remember the absolute joy of first discovering those books, then read this."
"Review"
by Patrick Rothfuss, New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Wind,
"A lovely story, unlike anything I've ever read before: funny, touching, and gently magical."
"Synopsis"
by Netread,
Startling, unusual, and yet irresistibly readable, Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.
"Synopsis"
by Netread,
Winner of the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel
Startling, unusual, and yet irresistably readable, Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.
Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. Then her mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, and Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled--and her twin sister dead.
Fleeing to her father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England-a place all but devoid of true magic. There, outcast and alone, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off…
Combining elements of autobiography with flights of imagination in the manner of novels like Jonathan Lethems The Fortress of Solitude, this is potentially a breakout book for an author whose genius has already been hailed by peers like Kelly Link, Sarah Weinman, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
One of School Library Journals Best Adult Books 4 Teens titles of 2011
One of io9's best Science Fiction & Fantasy books of the year 2011
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
