Book review: Among Others – Jo Walton

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Among Others by Jo Walton
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2153-4
TOR books, 2010, 302pp

Summary

After the death of her twin, Mor runs away from her power-hungry mother and ends up getting back in contact with her absentee father. She discovers a shared love with her father of science fiction and fantasy, but the purse strings are held by her father’s spinster sisters and so Mor is sent away to boarding school. There she discovers that she lacks the privileged background of her classmates and has to struggle to find her place, while at the same time fighting to resist magical attacks from her estranged mother.

Verdict

An interesting novel, which seemed to get ‘love it or hate it’ reviews on its release. I kind of understand why. It’s a subtle book and has some interesting ideas but a week or so after finishing it I’m still scratching my head a little bit, trying to decide what I think of it. Spoilers ahead.

Among Others is first and foremost about aftermaths; despite the presence of supernatural events, anyone expecting any major magical smack-downs is looking in the wrong place. We never find out exactly what Mor’s mother did, or exactly how that led to the death of Mor’s sister. The book is about Mor’s recovery.

Of course, given the fact that the dead sister is a twin and that both girls names begin ‘Mor’ the urge to speculate on matters of identity is irresistible (is the twin narrating the story the one she says she is?) I was quite delighted to discover that my suspicions were correct and at the same time totally unimportant – everyone knows and nobody is bothered by it. This struck me as a clever defeat of normal narrative expectation. In fact, this is a book that is consistent in not giving the expected answers – in its way reminiscent of China Mieville’s deliberate refusal to offer standard fantasy consolations.

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t find Mor an easy character to warm to. Her desire to keep everyone around her at arm’s reach means that the reader is inevitably also kept at a distance. Although some of this can be put down to her own grieving process, her basic personality also contributes.

The evocation of the mid-1970s is well done ; Mor is two years older than I would have been at the time and it all feels extremely familiar. The description of the tea and coffee served in the  cafes especially resonated with me! Society has moved on in very subtle steps since then, but looking back from now it really does feel like a different country. Walton also picks out the class differences very well. I particularly liked the observation that it was considered vulgar to talk about how much money your father earns (and it would have very specifically been your father, not your parents, that counted at this time) but you were allowed – in fact encouraged – to codify the understanding of wealth by discussing where you lived and what sort of car you had.

The other key thing about Among Others is that Mor examines everything in the light of the books she reads. This is where I think the book has the possibility of being very divisive; depending on your own reading habits this could either be an evocation of treasured memories or a major distraction. Although there was some overlap with my own reading experiences at that age, mine also diverted quite substantially. I certainly wasn’t reading the sheer number of different books Mor does at that point – although that was due to poverty rather than desire; I didn’t have that many books but they were re-read a lot! There are also a couple of points where Mor’s comments make no sense unless you have read the books concerned and, in one case, a reference is dropped which doesn’t give any clues to which book it refers, so unless you happen to have read it is extremely obscure. For me this teetered on the age of being a bit ‘in-jokey’ and potentially leaving the reader feeling excluded.

Having said that, the books discussed could also be used as a good starter reading list, though the implication that The Number of the Beast might not be totally unworthy of attention is tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment in my book!

In conclusion Among Others is an interesting and challenging book that I enjoyed but more for the evocation of the times and representations of class than I did for the sf references.

Originally published at Books, Bytes & Other Bits. Please leave any comments there.