Among Others

Among Others, by Jo Walton, won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the highest honor for a science fiction novel. But Among Others isn't really science fiction--it's about a girl reading science fiction.

Sure, there's some supernatural elements to the book, notably fairies and some magic, but most of it is the diary of a Welsh girl at a private school in England, and all the books she reads. And she reads a lot of books, and lets us know what she thinks of them. It reminded me of a girl I once knew who wrote in her diary every night the last song she listened to on the radio.

But Among Others isn't a bad book. The girl, Morwenna, is good company. She's fifteen, and crippled from an auto accident. She has left Wales to live with her father, who she does not know, in England. She attends a rigidly authoritarian school, where she doesn't fit in, and escapes in her books. Fortunately her father is a big sci-fi fan, and he has a big library, and she finds succor in the school and town libraries. "Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization," she rightly says.

As we read along, Mori, as she's called, mourns her dead twin sister (killed in the same accident) and worries about her mother, who apparently is some sort of witch. Mori ran away from her, but we don't really know the whole story. Her father's sisters are also some kind of witches, as they try to get Mori's ears pierced, which means that it will eliminate Mori's ability to practice magic.

Mori does cast a spell--to make friends. She's convinced this spell gets her invited to the science fiction book club at the library, where she meets a cute, interesting boy (perhaps the biggest fiction of this book is that girls would go to a science fiction book club).

The interesting thing about the book is the fairies. Mori has no trouble seeing them, because she believes in them (shades of Tinkerbell, though there is no clapping of hands). "Fairies tend to be either very beautiful or absolutely hideous. They all have eyes, and lots of them have some recognisable sort of head. Some of them have limbs in roughly human way, some are more like animals, and others bear no resemblance to anything at all."

But the problem with the book is that I kept waiting for something to happen. It just goes along, listing books and authors, Mori's trips to town, her trip back to Wales for Christmas, etc. The only action comes in the very end, and its rushed, as if Walton's battery was running low on her computer (or, since the book is set in 1979-80, maybe her typewriter ribbon was running out of ink).

Among Others, in addition to its awards, has some rapturous reviews, and I think that's because it's for a special audience, those who have read The Lord of the Rings several times and consume sci-fi/fantasy novels like peanuts. Of all the book she mentions, which must be in the hundreds, I've only read a few. I'm just not in the demographic to full appreciate the book.