Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway
If you've been reading my musings here for a while, you might well have spotted that I'm a big fan of Fantasy fiction.
Personally, I think its the genre best suited for reading because it takes full advantage of the internalized process of reading and writing. Because all the action goes on inside the minds of both reader and writer, it fully utilizes the possibilities of the imagination.
Anyone who reads a load of fantasy knows, of course, that there are a number of different types of fantasy, such as Epic (or High), Heroic, Contemporary, Urban, Fairytale Retellings, Revisionist, and Portal (among others). I could go on about what makes each of them unique, but that's for a different piece. Briefly though, each of these subgenres of fantasy possess different characteristics, or tropes, that allows them to stand out beside one another.
In recent years, there's seemed to have been this great spur in the fantasy writing community to do two things: subvert/modernize the tropes of these old subgenres and, more importantly, integrate these genres so that they better represent the diversity of humanity. Seanan McGuire's 2016 Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Novella, Every Heart a Doorway hits both birds with one stone (or in this case, a book).
Doorway is a portal fantasy novel, but with a modern, subversive twist.
Most portal fantasies tell the story of a character from "the now"--what higher literary critics than me call contemporary consensus reality--passing through some kind of rabbit hole, wardrobe, mirror, tornado, or other passageway into a strange secondary world. The plot that typically follows is simple: the passer-through goes on to have an adventure in this new world with their main goal being to return home.
McGuire, however, turns this whole story on its head.
Rather than focusing on the adventures in the fantasy world, Doorway looks at the aftermath of its casts adventures. The cast of characters McGuire assembles are stuck in the real world and desperately want to go back to their worlds (with one exception). More so than that, it examines how an experience like that--finding yourself in a place where you feel like you finally belong, only to have it yanked from you--can affect you.
Each of the characters--Nancy, Sumi, Jack and her sister Jill, and Christopher--have quirks they picked up in their respecting worlds. These quirks helped them to better cope with the reality of their worlds and they must retain them if they're ever to return to their "real homes." For their families in the real world, though, these quirks, such as Christopher's bone-flute playing or Nancy's habit of total stillness, are just bad habits they need to abandon. They're the carryovers from traumas that the kids must abandon if they're to move on. But they don't want to.
This is a major change from other Portal Fantasy, like The Chronicles of Narnia (a series McGuire directly calls out in the story), where the children who visit Narnia long to go back. However, none of them have any trouble readjusting to life in the real world. Anyone who's gone through any kind of life changing trauma--be it the death of a loved one, or a major health scare--knows that transition afterwards isn't an easy one. Doorway's story and characters provide a wonderful metaphor for those changes while also examining the realities of such experiences. Such events are like passing through a doorway from world to the next. And in their aftermaths, you long to return to the old because it felt more right.
The second masterstroke McGuire manages in this book is her casting choices. Character can easily make or break a book. (If no one cares about who you write about, they're not going to care about what happens.)
I mentioned that Fantasy writers--V.E. Schwab, Charlie Jane Anders, Daniel Jose Older, Tomi Adeyemi, N.K. Jemisin, Sabaa Tahir, and McGuire herself, among others--have been urging the world of fantasy writers to move towards greater diversity and inclusion regarding character. What I mean by that is greater representation on all levels: gender-identity, sexuality, race, and religious identities. Why exactly? Is it some big power play by the PC-Police residing in the Publishing world?
No. It's simply the decent thing to do. Humanity isn't homogenous, therefore, neither should its stories.
Doorway "adds to this cause" by including characters who stand in for types of people who haven't been so strongly present in fantasy until recently. Nancy is Ace (or asexual). Kabe is a trans-boy. Christopher is Latino, specifically Mexican. And Sumi is Japanese. All of these character cover the spectrum of human identity. They all inhabit Elenore West's School for Wayward Children just as motely humanity inhabits the wider world. A big deal isn't made about these differences. They're simply declares as having these identities, and the story moves one from there. What's important is their presence.
Walter Mosely, author of the Easily Rawlins books, said, "If you don't exist in the literature, you don't exist." Every Heart a Doorway is another book that seeks to rectify that, and, in my humble opinion, I think it succeeds. No one is reduced to being a stereotype or raised to be an archetype. They're just people.
And within and around this strange school--which struck me as an cross between Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Hogwarts, and the Addams Family House--many bizarre and at times gory stories await anyone who wishes to read this book.
There are presently three more books available in the series. If you like this one, check out the rest because I know I'll be picking them up soon.
Personally, I think its the genre best suited for reading because it takes full advantage of the internalized process of reading and writing. Because all the action goes on inside the minds of both reader and writer, it fully utilizes the possibilities of the imagination.
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| Courtesy of Tor.com/Macmillan |
In recent years, there's seemed to have been this great spur in the fantasy writing community to do two things: subvert/modernize the tropes of these old subgenres and, more importantly, integrate these genres so that they better represent the diversity of humanity. Seanan McGuire's 2016 Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Novella, Every Heart a Doorway hits both birds with one stone (or in this case, a book).
Doorway is a portal fantasy novel, but with a modern, subversive twist.
Most portal fantasies tell the story of a character from "the now"--what higher literary critics than me call contemporary consensus reality--passing through some kind of rabbit hole, wardrobe, mirror, tornado, or other passageway into a strange secondary world. The plot that typically follows is simple: the passer-through goes on to have an adventure in this new world with their main goal being to return home.
McGuire, however, turns this whole story on its head.
Rather than focusing on the adventures in the fantasy world, Doorway looks at the aftermath of its casts adventures. The cast of characters McGuire assembles are stuck in the real world and desperately want to go back to their worlds (with one exception). More so than that, it examines how an experience like that--finding yourself in a place where you feel like you finally belong, only to have it yanked from you--can affect you.
Each of the characters--Nancy, Sumi, Jack and her sister Jill, and Christopher--have quirks they picked up in their respecting worlds. These quirks helped them to better cope with the reality of their worlds and they must retain them if they're ever to return to their "real homes." For their families in the real world, though, these quirks, such as Christopher's bone-flute playing or Nancy's habit of total stillness, are just bad habits they need to abandon. They're the carryovers from traumas that the kids must abandon if they're to move on. But they don't want to.
This is a major change from other Portal Fantasy, like The Chronicles of Narnia (a series McGuire directly calls out in the story), where the children who visit Narnia long to go back. However, none of them have any trouble readjusting to life in the real world. Anyone who's gone through any kind of life changing trauma--be it the death of a loved one, or a major health scare--knows that transition afterwards isn't an easy one. Doorway's story and characters provide a wonderful metaphor for those changes while also examining the realities of such experiences. Such events are like passing through a doorway from world to the next. And in their aftermaths, you long to return to the old because it felt more right.
The second masterstroke McGuire manages in this book is her casting choices. Character can easily make or break a book. (If no one cares about who you write about, they're not going to care about what happens.)
I mentioned that Fantasy writers--V.E. Schwab, Charlie Jane Anders, Daniel Jose Older, Tomi Adeyemi, N.K. Jemisin, Sabaa Tahir, and McGuire herself, among others--have been urging the world of fantasy writers to move towards greater diversity and inclusion regarding character. What I mean by that is greater representation on all levels: gender-identity, sexuality, race, and religious identities. Why exactly? Is it some big power play by the PC-Police residing in the Publishing world?
No. It's simply the decent thing to do. Humanity isn't homogenous, therefore, neither should its stories.
Doorway "adds to this cause" by including characters who stand in for types of people who haven't been so strongly present in fantasy until recently. Nancy is Ace (or asexual). Kabe is a trans-boy. Christopher is Latino, specifically Mexican. And Sumi is Japanese. All of these character cover the spectrum of human identity. They all inhabit Elenore West's School for Wayward Children just as motely humanity inhabits the wider world. A big deal isn't made about these differences. They're simply declares as having these identities, and the story moves one from there. What's important is their presence.
Walter Mosely, author of the Easily Rawlins books, said, "If you don't exist in the literature, you don't exist." Every Heart a Doorway is another book that seeks to rectify that, and, in my humble opinion, I think it succeeds. No one is reduced to being a stereotype or raised to be an archetype. They're just people.
And within and around this strange school--which struck me as an cross between Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Hogwarts, and the Addams Family House--many bizarre and at times gory stories await anyone who wishes to read this book.
There are presently three more books available in the series. If you like this one, check out the rest because I know I'll be picking them up soon.
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