Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else.
But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.
Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.
But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things.
No matter the cost.

IN A NUTSHELL
A truly exceptional novella, beautifully written and narrated with skill. It has a profound understanding of what it means to know who you are and to live in a world where even those who love you are incapable of accepting what you know about yourself. There’s a whole world of magic and a serial killer mystery but the focus remains firmly on the emotional and social challenges faced by young people who have found the one place where they can be themselves, only to be exiled from it. This was a book that I found myself deeply engaged with and which delivered even more than I expected from it.

‘Every Heart A Doorway‘ was a wonderful surprise. Somehow, I’d gotten the impression that it was a Young Adult, cosy, found-family-will-make-everything-better kind of book. I was completely wrong. 

There’s nothing cosy about this book. It’s filled with sadness, hate, anger, grief and violence. It’s one of the few books I’ve read that acknowledges the pain that hope can cause. It’s about young people, but it’s written with a mature sensibility. It’s not about found-family. It’s about finding the place which feels like home and where people will accept you for who you are, not who they hope you will become or who they regret you no longer being. 

As a teenager, I read ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe‘ with great enjoyment, until Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmond came home – after years of adult achievement in Narnia – to be children again. I wondered how Lucy would see the adult world she wasn’t supposed to know about, and how Edmond lived with himself. It seems Seanan McGuire wondered the same thing and created this richly imagined answer.

One of the things that I liked most about the book was that there was no attempt to position any of these children as normal. They are different. They are unique. Their happiness or lack of it depends on being valued for who they are rather than how close to normal they can pretend to be. Normal is a value judgement in a way that typical or usual are not. 

Nancy, the character through whose experiences we are introduced to the School for Wayward Children, likes to be still and quiet. Statue still. Almost not breathing quiet. The ‘normal’ world is too fast and too bright for her. I loved that she understood that still and quiet were right for her, no matter what the rest of the world thought. I’m an introvert, but I’ve had to spend a large portion of my life dealing with people who see extroversion as not just normal but admirable. I can fake extraversion, but it’s a strain. It has no appeal for me at all. I felt like I knew what Nancy was going through. 

The writing in the book is beautifully calm and precise without being cold and emotionless. It combines insight and empathy. I re-read many of the sentences, not because I didn’t understand them but because they said so well what needed to be said. My favourite quote came from the discussion about why so few of the Wayward Children were boys. The answer was that boys are so noisy that people notice when they go missing. Girls are often quiet and may not be immediately noticed. It was explained that the noisiness of boys is a learned behaviour rather than a biological marker. Then this line was delivered:

“We notice the silence of men. We depend on the silence of women.”

Each of the main characters had a distinct ideolect that reflected how they saw and related to the world and the people in it. I admired that these characters remained consistent and separate. They collaborated and shared their stories, but they didn’t alter their behaviour to fit into an emerging group norm. 

Cynthia Hopkins’ narration captured the tone of the prose well. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.