Among Others in The Toast

Nov 19, 2019 P. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fictive, speculative, fantasy, paranormal-or-magic, slightly-off

I don't know if I've ever read a fantasy/speculative book quite like this from the perspective of the protagonist after the Big Event. It highlights the everyday of magic and the breathless magic of finding your chosen family, while not taking away the specialness of either one. It was about libraries but I didn't feel pandered to as a library worker. I had a dissonance of always expecting it to be set in the 40s for some reason even though the year was printed at the top of every diary entry bu ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jul 17, 2013 Meghan rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

One of my Goodreads friends refers to this book in her own review as (I'm paraphrasing here) "a love affair between a teenage girl and the Interlibrary Loan system." Raised in the Welsh mountains, Mor and her twin interacted with fairies growing up, while living with their witch mother, who used magic to dark ends. After the fairies and their mother have a climactic battle, Mor's twin dies, and she flees to her father, who she barely knows. With a crippled leg and strange accent, she is enrolled One of my Goodreads friends refers to this book in her own review as (I'm paraphrasing here) "a love affair between a teenage girl and the Interlibrary Loan system." Raised in the Welsh mountains, Mor and her twin interacted with fairies growing up, while living with their witch mother, who used magic to dark ends. After the fairies and their mother have a climactic battle, Mor's twin dies, and she flees to her father, who she barely knows. With a crippled leg and strange accent, she is enrolled at a posh boarding school at the age of 15.

The novel is told in journal format. Mor is a huge science fiction fan, and the book takes place in 1979. Her journal entries are grounded in the books she's reading through the library, and her thoughts on Le Guin, Heinlein, Vonnegut, and Tolkien. This has captured so well what it's like to be a teenage reader - notes about authors to try and check out, glee at ordering 20 old Mary Renaults through ILL.

The plot is somewhat less important than the character and setting. It twists the magic boarding school setup to make the school a place of not magic, while the fairies live in industrial ruins and the intersections of humans and the natural world. In a way, this book is the epilogue to an unwritten book about the twins and the battle and their mother, but it's strangely compelling on its own, even though you aren't ever immersed into the magic.

There are two quotes about the magic of this fantasy world that stay with me:

"At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who they belonged to. Grampar’s chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as he did himself. Gramma’s shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her missing breast. My mother’s shoes positively vibrated with consciousness. Our toys looked out for us. There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma couldn’t use. It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she’d cut herself with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood. If I rummaged through the kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding. After she died, that faded. Then there were the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present. They were made of silver, and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special.

"I thought, sitting there, that everything is magic. Using things connects them to you, being in the world connects you to the world, the sun streams down magic and people and animals and plants grow from sunlight and the world turns and everything is magic. Fairies are more in the magic than in the world, and people are more in the world than in the magic."

...more

Like · see review

Oct 27, 2012 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned, mother-daughter, fantasy, lis-524-discussion, boarding-school, magic, sweet, family, magic-realism, fairy-tale

Just wonderful. Required reading for every woman with an awkward teen SF fangirl living in her past.

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 11, 2012 Celia rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, 2012-books

I was rather disappointed by this novel, which won the Best Novel at the Hugo Awards this year. I knew it was a fairly nostalgic novel about fandom, but thought I'd enjoy that sort of thing. I think though, on reflection, that I'm not really a Fan. I enjoy reading a lot of speculative fiction, but it's not the only sort of fiction I enjoy, and it's not a vital part of my identity - I also haven't read much sci-fi of the era Mor refers to through this novel. Perhaps to really enjoy Mor's tale of ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 03, 2014 Hannah Notess rated it it was amazing

A dark, bookish bildungsroman that bridges fantasy and reality. Definitely made me want to read more classic sci-fi. Recommended if you're fond of I Capture the Castle or We Have Always Lived in the Castle (I guess, any book with Castle in the title). ...more

Like · see review

Jan 02, 2012 Melanie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: contemporary-lit, magical-realism

This is a book for people who love books - for people whose childhoods were shaped by books. And it is one of the best novels I have read this year. I loved the setting (Wales and English boarding school) and the theory of magic so heavily influenced by The Lathe of Heaven (one of my favorite sci-fi novels). Now I want to read all of the classic sci-fi novels that the protagonist reads, but I am afraid I won't enjoy any of them as much as I did Among Others. ...more

Like · see review

Jan 22, 2011 Alicia rated it it was amazing

http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2011/01... ...more

Like · see review

May 22, 2012 Kelly rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, favorites, fantasy

Amaaaaazing

Like · see review

Jan 25, 2013 Allison rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2014

Really liked this book. I liked the way that the magic was just there in the background, not over-explained, not too much of a giant whiz-bang pleasemakemybookintoamovie prologue, just a tiny stretch beyond the ordinary life.

It does make me feel old that the 70s is what's passing for "old-timey" nowadays. ...more

Like · see review