Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
There are many stories of children who cross over from our mundane world into a world of magic where animals talk, lions and witches battle, scarecrows dance, and rabbits have pocket handkerchiefs. Whether they get to that world through an old wardrobe, a cyclone, or falling down a rabbit hole, they often find a place where they feel accepted and powerful, and where for the first time in their lives, they feel at home. Then they come back home to our world and the story ends.
But not this story. For every boy or girl who has crossed into another world, who struggles to cope with being back in our world, who spends their lives trying to find the magical entrance again, there is a place: Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Here, all the children who have fought candy-cane knights and faced off angry villagers with their mad scientist mentor come together to support each other.
The story follows Nancy, who found a door to the Halls of the Dead and served the Lord of the Dead as a living statue, learning to be still and quiet. Now she iswas back in the “real” world, with parents who expect her to like rainbows, the too-bright sun and other things the fast, warm people liked. But she no longer wanted to be fast and warm, she wanted to go back to where she belonged. She wanted to find her true home, but she couldn’t find the door that would open to it. And that’s all any of the children Eleanor West took care of wanted, it’s what she wanted herself, had wanted for 80 years.
Each of them still longs to find a way back to the magical world they left behind, and some spend their days looking. But when things start to go very, deeply wrong they have to band together and combine their unique experiences if they hope to survive.
Seanan McGuire is known for her urban fantasy writing and (as Mira Grant) for horror. There are elements of these in Every Heart a Doorway, but a lot of the horror doesn’t come from nightmare realms of fantasy, but from more mundane sources: parents who are too controlling, a world where you never seem to fit in, the myriad cruelties of other children. This is a young adult novel that has been a huge crossover hit with adults, winning the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex awards for best novella, and spinning off a series of sequels that further explore the characters and worlds introduced here.
It’s a wonderful, engaging journey of a book, a rabbit hole you’ll want to fall down just to see where it goes.
Dethe Elza is a Digital Services Technician at the Brighouse Branch of the Richmond Public Library. He is currently reading James McCann’s The Three Spartans and writing his first novel.
