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    Among Others: A Novel
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    Among Others: A Novel
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    Among Others: A Novel
    Ebook353 pages6 hours

    Among Others: A Novel

    By Jo Walton

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winner of the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel
    Winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel

    Startling, unusual, and yet irresistibly readable, Jo Walton's Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.

    Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. Then her mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, and Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled--and her twin sister dead.

    Fleeing to her father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England-a place all but devoid of true magic. There, outcast and alone, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off...

    Combining elements of autobiography with flights of imagination in the manner of novels like Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, this is potentially a breakout book for an author whose genius has already been hailed by peers like Kelly Link, Sarah Weinman, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

    One of School Library Journal's Best Adult Books 4 Teens titles of 2011
    One of io9's best Science Fiction & Fantasy books of the year 2011

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 18, 2011
    ISBN9781429991520
    Unavailable
    Among Others: A Novel
    Author

    Jo Walton

    JO WALTON won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novel Among Others and the Tiptree Award for her novel My Real Children. Before that, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Tooth and Claw won the World Fantasy Award. The novels of her Small Change sequence—Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown—have won acclaim ranging from national newspapers to the Romantic Times Critics' Choice Award. A native of Wales, she lives in Montreal.

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    Reviews for Among Others

    4/5

    1,240 ratings163 reviews

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    • 5/5
      4.5 stars. I thought this was really fun. Not what I expected and the better for it.The story is set in a slightly alternative Wales and England circa 1979-1980. It's written as diary entries by a teenage girl (Mori) who's gone through some pretty serious trauma - an accident that has damaged her ability to walk, the loss of her twin sister, surviving an insane and power-hungry mother who's a bit of an evil witch, and escaping the tangles of that past to wind up in boarding school England. The author never gives much detail to most of this trauma, although parts are revealed slowly, which makes sense for a girl writing her own diary.Life in a boarding school when you are not from the area, don't understand (or care about) the social norms, and are physically different is challenging. Mori finds escape, adventure, and eventually friendship through her love of SF. I can see why the book won a Nebula and a Hugo - there are so many references to SF novels of the era, it must have been like a homecoming to so many of the folks who voted for the awards. I'm a little bit younger than Mori but because my true love is fantasy, I personally only knew a few of the works she referenced (LOTR, Pern, Le Guin).I really liked how the book treated magic. It's not "wave a wand and everything's different instantaneously," it's "cast a spell and things start to unfold." Seems a bit more like how magic might actually work in the world we live in. :-)I also really liked the end. It wasn't what I expected from the book jacket. It was less dramatic but oh so powerful at the same time.
    • 4/5
      ** spoiler alert ** Very interesting book. I really enjoyed it. Someone wrote a not-so-flattering review saying if you were over 40 and remembered the books or an alienated 15 year old you would like it. Well, I guess that fits me on both counts. I was 46 when I read this and remember many of the books Mori mentions and I remember being a 15 year old girl who was considered odd because she read Sci-Fi/fantasy. I enjoyed the characterizations - her classmates and family members are believable. There is much more I liked about this book, but can't say too much without giving too much away. I'd love to discuss this book with someone else who has read it already.A few pages in I started wondering if Mori was an unreliable narrator. I'm still not sure...
    • 2/5
      I ordinarily am quite fond of Ms. Walton's works, but this one left me cold, for some reason. If it's your first foray into her oeuvre, I'd start with something else. One of her strengths is her books are all quite different!
    • 5/5
      One of the most moving books about loss I've ever had the pleasure to read. It doesn't hurt that the protagonist is also a major sci-fi fan, even if she's more into the classics than I am. So many examples of literary references done right in this book, that don't detract from the world or narrative being built here, but add onto and strengthen it.
    • 4/5
      Captivating
    • 4/5
      While I was reading this book, my wife asked me what I thought of it so far. I told her I didn't know yet, which was true. This is the sort of book that is hard to evaluate one way or another until you finish it. Once I finished it, she asked me again. I was still unsure of how I felt about it.

      There's a lot to like in this book, but it has its share of problems.


      The narrator is Mori, a 15 year old Welsh girl, who long before the book begins was involved in using magic to prevent her witch of a mother from using magic to take over the world. As a result of that battle, she ended up crippled and her twin sister died. However, all that went down before the book begins. This is about what came after, as she observes, comparing her journal to Frodo returning to the Shire.

      Mori moves to live with her long estranged father, who sets her up at a boarding school. The majority of the tale is a coming of age story as she grapples with the culture of an upper-crust English boarding school, seeks refuge in books, and tries to establish contact with the local fairies as she had in Wales. She meets her estranged family, tries to come to terms with them, meets a group of fellow SF fans, and tries to fend off magical attacks from her mother.

      Ultimately, the book is centered around her joy in reading and the refuge and salvation the books provide for her. The narrator devotes many lines in their diary to reactions to various books, primarily SF.

      It's a courageous book, in that it takes so many risks by having what could be considered the epic plot elements (preventing her mother from taking over the world) occur only outside the narrative itself. Instead, that information is shared as an aside and in conversation. The fallout from this, such as her mother's attacks, is addressed, but secondary to the personal growth plot line.

      That being said, there are times that all the talk of SF books, while enjoyable, gets to feel like a bit of a distraction from the other elements of the story. Also, since her magical system is deniable and only loosely explained, it ,ales the final showdown between her and her mother to feel a little odd, since we've never seen magic work like that before in the book. Which makes it feel like that scene isn't really earned, especially since so much of that conflict is left off of the page. It's all matter-of-fact to Mori.


      It's a well-written, and ambitious work, especially for what it leaves out of the story, and the coming of age stuff is really quite moving. However, as discussed above, if you don't have a good familiarity with SF canon, this could leave you cold as the narrator spends a lot of time discussing the worms she's reading, which can get tiresome even for insiders.

      Plus, there are some glaringly unearned scenes such as the aforementioned final conflict. The worst offender by far is the scene where her father tries to crawl into her bed, which is never set up and never readdressed. It's needlessly shocking, and adds nothing to the story except an opportunity to name check Heinlein.

      All and all, this book is worth reading, and while I quite enjoyed it, what you take away from it will vary widely based on the reader.
    • 5/5
      Morwenna and her twin sister saved the world from an evil created by their half-mad mother. Not before it crippled Mor and killed her sister. This is how the story starts, but then it jumps ahead and becomes a diary/journal that Mor keeps, documenting her time at boarding school, her friends, her obsession with Science Fiction and the aftermath of her magical childhood. I felt that I was dropped into an interesting world that we are just seeing a tiny corner of. Its a world of fairies and magic and danger that Mor escapes for a while in both books and school. Tons of good book recommendations and reminders in here. Very interesting tale, well told."It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books""Bibliotropic," Hugh said. "Like sunflowers are heliotripic, they naturually turn towards the sun. We naturally turn towards the bookshop."9/10S: 2/1/17 - F:2/9/17 (9 Days)
    • 5/5
      It's like this book stuck its hand inside my chest and reached back into my youth and yanked it out, the whole book-filled mess of it, and then we both looked at it and at the way people live stories into their lives, and then I cried. It's not going to touch everyone that way, probably, this book, but it was incredibly resonant for me. It's a meta schoolgirl fantasy novel, but it's like holding up a mirror for a certain kind of young reader, it seems very autobiographical and it is beautifully written, and it felt like it sewed itself right into my heart from the first pages. God, everything, all the SFnal references, the way she leaned on Heinlein and Tolkein and LeGuin and Zelazny and Tiptree and McCaffrey... how she'd gauge new people by whether or not they'd want to Impress a dragon... I don't know. It was also a book about grief, and life, and the protagonist has a disability (she uses a cane), and and and. Yes, I rec it.
    • 4/5
      I'm not normally one to get sucked into a diary-format epistolary, but Walton's voice is strong and the story engaging.

      If you have ever loved books enough that they shape your friendships (not the other way around), you'll enjoy this book.
    • 4/5
      I've been wanting to read this for ages, but am unfond of owning hardcovers and no-one will sell an ebook of it to me, so had to resort to waiting for the library to get it. So finally the library got it. It was worth the wait and I devoured it in an evening, a morning commute, and a lunch break.It reminds me much of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin in the way it's steeped in the literature (there English literature in general, here sf/fantasy) and romanticises the university / fandom environment where Our Heroine can be so steeped. This is also the way it's less effective for me than for other readers, because my experiences of university and of fandom are just not that qualitatively different to my experiences of anywhere else, so reading about these utopias is pleasant but feels as much a fantasy as the fairies that reside at the edges of them.(I was also bugged by how Wim is presented - especially in the context of fandom. First the rumour is he's Done Some Woman Wrong; but then it's revealed it's All Just A Misunderstanding. Or at least he tells us this. We never hear the woman's side of the story. Okay, Mori's a naive teenager, but she's so closely identified with the author that it felt like Jo saying that if the Very Important Fandom Guy says it was all just a misunderstanding then why bother even asking what the woman thinks? Which I rather think is very far from what she believes, but ouch, that's really how it came across in the book.)However, fandom aside, the book is achingly beautiful. The story and backstory unfold at a measured pace. This too is I think like Tam Lin, and a few other references both to the novel and to the original story make me think this isn't just happenstance. But these are resonances, not parallels; it's very much its own story, about grief and healing, and fairies.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable. Light-ish, which is fine, I'm having trouble getting through epic tomes at the moment.
      Nice bit about a sf book group. Good/different thoughts on magic & fairies.
    • 4/5
      Stack up all the other boarding school and college adventure stories--even vaunted ones like The Secret History--and for the most part they bear about as much relation to the actual lives of young adults as Middle Earth does to actual earth. Among Others has enough truth to it for a dozen of the others. And a lot of the fantasy, as well. Great book.
    • 5/5
      Every time I read a book by Jo Walton, I am in awe all over again. Half way through this one, I knew I was going to have to reread it someday -- after I make a list of all the science fiction and fantasy books that it references and read those that I've missed out on. This autobiographically influenced fantasy novel is as intimate an experience between reader and author as I have ever encountered. Reading it is like inhabiting Walton's real life and your own at the same time, even when the narrative is talking about fairies and magic and other worlds. Nothing here is overblown or overwrought and yet each detail feels both real and magical at once. This is the story of a young woman who has lost her twin, and all the family she knew. It is also a story of that young woman rebuilding herself, in the face of opposition that is sometimes real and sometimes magical and sometimes both or maybe neither. It is still also a love letter to the great science fiction and fantasy classics of the twentieth century; the narrative is peppered with references to the works of Zelazny, Delany, Bradbury, LeGuin, and dozens of others as our heroine uses her enthusiasm for her favorite books to connect with those who seem so different from herself. And don't we all? This book will resonate deeply with anyone who has every been that lone book nerd searching for her people. Seriously, read it.
    • 4/5
      Thoughtful, smart and clever.
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book in a mellow way. it was as if I had rediscovered music from my teens with half forgotten lyrics. like the main character, I was thrilled to be included in a world with books and ideas. this has prompted me to reopen my dusty bookshelves filled with 35¢ paperbacks. "Welcome back to Mars"....and the future as it was then
    • 2/5
      I have no idea how this book won a Hugo award, maybe because all it does is give lip service to other SciFi books. I felt more like I was reading someone’s reviews of other books than I was reading an actual story. The first few chapters drop some hints of fairies and magic, but then it just turns into boring diary entries. I have no idea how a piece of crap like this gets published much less wins awards. I pushed on for a bit hoping it would improve but it did not. My first truly wasted reading allotment. At least it piqued my interest in some other books. Sigh
    • 5/5
      Reading this book felt like reading my best friend's diary, the one I would have found, no matter what or when. Since I am also writing about a girl, I felt like this book was one of those gifts, like a lesson from Tolkien or Le Guin, but from a younger person, more conversant with the ways magic might operate in our crushingly modern world. Jo Walton creates room for imagination and identity to flourish and self-construct, and reminds me of that brilliant skein of possibilities crafted by so many writers of science fiction and fantasy..
    • 1/5
      Even though I have read most of the books that are referenced I cannot always remember the names of the characters in them and the endless name dropping quickly became very tedious. To be honest it felt like the author was having a wank.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book while I was reading it, but on the whole I was disappointed by it.First, there were many parts of the story that never ended up leading anywhere. To some extent I think this is a result of the journal format, but the author sticks to the idea of a realistic journal a little too closely sometimes. The most notable example of an unresolved story line is the suggestion of an attempt at molestation by Daniel. This incident is completely dropped and it's far too serious a topic to be a throwaway bit here. It's also concerning that Daniel ends up with a heroic role at the end of things given this. But the thing that really made this book less enjoyable for me was the constant discussion of classic SF and fantasy books. To me it feels like this book is only written for fans who attend WorldCon and have already read all of the classics. I don't think it's reasonable to expect readers to have read most of the books that are discussed, especially since the genre is so much larger than it once was. This really alienated me, even though many of the main character's experiences resonated with me - reading a library's SFF section alphabetically, being better with books than with people, etc. As a person who was never lucky enough to find an SFF book club or many people who share this interest with me, I felt excluded by this book, and it seems likely many younger fans will as well.I read this book because I've been reading the list of books that have won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and it was a disappointing entry in that list.
    • 4/5
      Not your ordinary YA type novel of a young woman who doesn't fit in, it has different elements that make it both hard to follow and fascinating at the same time. There were times when the reading felt extremely personal and others when it becomes almost too fantasy-ish. But it is a slog to get through in parts, and other parts it is a wonderful read.

      Recommended but with some reservations.
    • 4/5
      I know a lot of people who really liked this but it left me a bit meh.It's the diary of a girl who sees faeries and who reads SF voraciously. She's slightly younger than me but we hit a lot of the same fiction at about the same time but I preferred fantasy over SF and still do. Mori realises that her mother is planning something and that it will cause problems to the faerie in the area. Together with her sister they try to keep her mother from realising her black magical plans. During this event Mori loses her sister and is moved to the custody of her father and his sisters.Throughout I was left with lingering questions about the magical creatures and what was going on in reality rather than what was going on in Mori's head. It was a worthwhile read but not really one I would re-read.
    • 4/5
      This has to be one of the most peripheral/associational novels to have won both the Hugo and Nebula. At best, it might be a fantasy, of the witches and ghosts sort, but even that's never for certain. What it really is, among other things (see what I did there?) is a book about science fiction and fantasy, and the reading thereof, like Walton's non-fiction "What makes this book so great". As a story, it's interesting in that it is the sequel, or denouement, to an event that would have been the major set piece of another novel. That event is never described in any detail. It led to the death of the main character's twin sister, and her running away to live with a father she never knew. The story is told in her journal, but more important to her is briefly documenting the many various science fiction and fantasy books she is reading. These are all classics available as of 1979 -- the one non-well-known book (at least in the US) being Space Hostages. Many books are mentioned but not described. Others trigger quite a bit of discussion. One of those classics is The Lord of the Rings. It is the main character's favorite book. She notes that an important aspect of LotR was the last long section, from the return to the shire to the closing out of Frodo's time in MiddleEarth. The aftermath matters as much as the climax. This novel is about the aftermath, and what comes next.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      The premise: ganked from BN.com: Startling, unusual, and irresistibly readable, Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.As a child growing up in Wales, Morwenna played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. When her half-mad mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled -- and her twin sister dead.Fleeing to a father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England -- a place all but devoid of true magic. There, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off….Combining elements of autobiography with flights of imagination, this is a stunning new novel by an author whose genius has already been hailed by dozens of her peers.My Rating: Worth Reading, with ReservationsI know, I know. A ton of people love this book to pieces. And I suspect a year and a half's worth of hype is part of the reason I found myself disappointed while reading, yet I can't tell you what my expectations were for the book before I started reading it, except maybe thinking that this would blow all the other Hugo nominees out of the water. Yet, despite that disappointment, there is so much about this book to chew on, to consider, to examine and reexamine in a completely new light. While I'm sure others will disagree, there are so many ways to interpret this book, and because of that, it makes great fodder for discussion AND re-reading, because with re-reading, one can decide to look for clues that supports one interpretation over the other, and then on another re-read, you can look for clues for the opposite theory. And that, in and of itself, makes so much sense when you consider Jo Walton is an avid fan of re-reading, so why shouldn't she write a book that begs multiple interpretations and therefore invites multiple re-reads? Now that I know what to expect, I imagine a re-read will be a completely different experience, and one day, I'll get to see what that experience is.Yet, for what the book is, there's a lot left in the ether, a lot of loose ends that bother me. While reading, I couldn't help but notice how little I had left as I approached the end, and there was so much, in my mind, to resolve that I had no idea how it would be done. And while there is an epic ending (real or imagined), said ending is both pat and abrupt, leaving me more than a little unsatisfied. The ambiguity of the book, like the book's magic system, is both a plus and a minus for the story. And unfortunately, at least upon first read, I don't think the book provides enough ammo for either side to be right or wrong. I think it's eternally ambiguous, though as I said before, perhaps I'll change my mind upon re-reading.Still, I was reminded of the graphic novel Joe the Barbarian by Grant Morrison: a story that pushes the reader to the limit in terms of ambiguity. The argument for the fantasy world being a by-product of Joe's sugar-deprived state (he's diabetic) is a very compelling one, yet the fantasy world interacts with the real world in such a way that one wonders: are both real? And once we get to the end, the question of what was real and what wasn't doesn't matter in terms of the outcome of the story, so rather than feeling frustrated by that ambiguity, the reader is left to admire it.I wanted to admire this book and its ambiguity. I didn't. Perhaps too-high expectations worked against me, and maybe now that expectations are in check, I'll be able to appreciate the book for what it is, rather than what I want it to be. But that'll take another read, and that will take a while since, unlike Mori, I don't have hours upon hours every day to read gobs of books. :)Of Jo Walton's work, though, I still think Tooth and Claw is my favorite out of what I've read (Farthing and Among Others), which is ironic, since it's the one I thought I'd like the least. While Among Others didn't grab me the way I'd hoped, I can see why it grabbed so many others, since it is, first and foremost, a love letter to the genre. It won't get my vote for Hugo, but since it's already won the Nebula, that may not matter. Walton is still a solid writer in my book, and I look forward to getting my hands on more of her fiction in the future.Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. As with all book club selections, both my review and the comments will be riddled with spoilers, so if you're spoiler-phobic, do not read the full review. For those who don't care about spoilers, or who've read the book, the full review may be found at my blog, and I've provided a link to said review below. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome!REVIEW: Jo Walton's AMONG OTHERSHappy Reading!
    • 5/5
      A quiet, deeply thoughtful, book-loving read. The nature of magic, the nature of friendship, the nature of sibling twins, the joy and stability of books in a lonely life, the difficulty of being othered, the happiness of finding community--so much to ponder and enjoy here.
    • 5/5
      I've reviewed this before, at great length. Rereading it was interesting, though, both because Jo Walton shares a lot of my thoughts on rereading (see her book What Makes This Book So Great, which is a collection of essays), and because it's not the kind of book that is changed by knowing the ending, because it's not a book with a climactic scene, really. There is one, but ultimately that's not as important as the whole process of the book: Mori learning to live without her sister, learning to grow and find her place. I said in my original review that it's set after the real climax of the story, and that still seems fair to say. We don't even learn about exactly what the big events were, because what's interesting about Among Others is watching Mori live with it.I still feel quite personally close to this book. Mori's general style reminds me of myself at the same age, though I was a 2000 version rather than a 1970s, so my journal was online and I had a bit of an audience, but the similarities are still there. This time I noticed the differences more -- Mori's physical disability, the fact that she was at a boarding school, the fact that she had a twin and I never did, etc -- but I still felt that kinship with her, her imagination, love of books and her Welshness. Definitely not least because I still inhale books like Mori, and have a self-professed love affair with libraries. They don't seem to make the interlibrary loan system as apparent these days, but it's worth chasing up a little, because it might just surprise you.Anyway, in many ways it isn't just the big things I identify with Mori on. It's little details. It's when she talks about not giving anything away, because it can be used against her. When she befriends other misfits. When books are more interesting to her than the things people are doing around her. Little mistakes that she makes because she reads more than she interacts with people, like thinking "Jr" is a name in itself and pronounced "Jirr" (don't get my mother started on this subject, please). It's the exact same reaction to people claiming something is a "successor to Tolkien" or "as good as Tolkien"!All in all, I loved rereading this. It made me smile, sometimes laugh; sometimes it made me shake my head at teens and Mori and myself at that age (and even, really, myself now). One of the best moments was coming to one of Mori's entries about riding the train into Wales, rereading a book, as I was riding a train into Wales rereading Among Others. Delightfully meta.And I still think What Makes This Book So Great makes a very good companion read to get into all sorts of classic fantasy and SF.
    • 5/5
      "Among Others" has been called a love letter to SFF, which is true. It also reminded me of Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle" in its style and its form: a precocious and bookish 15-year-old's diary entries. If you enjoyed "I Capture the Castle" and you like fantasy, give it a try. It won both the Nebula and Hugo awards, which is quite a feat for a book that doesn't have action sequences and whose narrative arc is rather gentle. I was skeptical at first but quite won over, before long, by the narrator's voice and Walton's affection for her characters and skill in telling the story.
    • 5/5
      This is a stunningly wonderful book.

      I have never read anything that so perfectly captures the experience of being fifteen, a science fiction reader just discovering some of the greats of the field (not to mention fandom!), the new kid in school who doesn't quite fit in, the young woman just starting to reach for adulthood, and not sure where she fits in a family where no one except her imperfectly known father seems to share her interests and concerns.

      Of course, Morwenna's problems are in a whole different league from my own at her age. Morwenna's twin sister was killed in a car accident that left Morwenna crippled. That accident was their witch mother's retaliation for their successful thwarting of her spell intended to make her a Dark Queen. Now Morwenna is dependent on the father she's never met.

      On the one hand, Morwenna and her father Daniel bond over their love of science fiction. On the other hand, her aunts, his three sisters, decide that she belongs at Arlinghurst, the same boarding school they attended, so that's where she goes. It's a tough transition for her, a crippled girl among enthusiastic athletes, a Welsh girl amongst mostly upper middle class English girls, an enthusiastic reader amongst students who think reading is only for studying. But she's smart, and determined, and doesn't really see any better alternatives, so she finds ways to cope.

      And as she struggles to find her own place, and her own friends, and her own path, she discovers that the threat from her mother is not over. Together with all the normal adolescent challenges, Morwenna also does battle with her mother's hostility and ambitions, the ethics of magic, and the desire and opportunity to be reunited with her sister.

      This is a beautifully written book, lovingly and convincingly depicting both adolescent angst and the joys of discovering science fiction and the community of science fiction fandom.

      Highly recommended.

      I purchased this book and have received no compensation from the publisher or anyone else for reading and reviewing it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This novel takes the form of a journal written by a 15-year-old Welsh girl in 1979/1980. She's reasonably intelligent, imaginative, and reads a great deal, especially science fiction. She also sees fairies, but they are not a big part of the story. Actually, there isn't much of a story in the traditional sense of a plot. It's a series of diary entries, in which she writes about her experiences with school and family and her impressions of some of the books she has read. I could relate the latter, because I read most of these myself when I was younger, but never having been a 15-year-old Welsh girl, I couldn't much relate to the rest of it.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this, but it did drag on a lot, without really going anywhere.
    • 5/5
      Sometimes you find the exact right book, precisely when you need it.