Sometime last year while scouring booklists online for new reads, I came across The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard. It’s a coming-of-age story about a sixteen-year-old girl named Odile who lives in a rather fantastical world — a village bordered to the west by its past and to the east by its future. The villages are twenty years apart and stretch in either direction presumably to infinity. A wall separates each village, but special classes of people, if they obtain permission from an oversight body called the Conseil, are allowed to visit the past or the future.
As you can imagine, these visits are mostly made by mourners visiting the past to see their loved ones. One such visit sets things off at the start of this story.
Odile is an awkward loner at school but she is smart and has a promising future in the Conseil ahead of her. Being a teenager, she also (kinda sorta) has a thing for a boy called Edme who once rescued her from bullies. One day, she catches a glimpse of Edme’s parents at the edge of the school grounds. She recognizes them even though they’re significantly older, which can only mean that they’re from the future. Which in turn can only mean that at some point in the future, something awful happens to Edme! Having inadvertently learned this secret, Odile must now decide what to do with it.
What would you do if you had foreknowledge that something bad would happen to someone you liked? Would telling them change their fate or just rob them of peace in the time they had remaining? Odile grapples with these questions throughout the story as the writer reveals to us how her decisions change her life, and the lives of everyone around her.
For a time after reading this book, nothing else came close. It’s a story that leaves you buzzing — elegant turns of phrase, and the pacing is such that you want to keep reading and find out what happens at the end but you don’t want to finish the story. This is Scott Alexander’s debut novel but you wouldn’t know it. This meant that I could not (obsessively) immerse myself in any of his other works so I did truly feel bereft when I finished reading it. Then I came across Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi while searching for my next fix. There was a lot of buzz around it online, but that’s a review for another day.
Even though it’s in the time-traveling, science-fiction and fantasy genres, this story is accessible to everyone. The Other Valley ponders the question of grief, friendship, love and how far one would go to stop the gnawing jaws of regret. A beautiful, moving story and a five star read. I highly recommend, but if you prefer to watch the show, apparently it’s coming to TV. An adaptation is in the works although no word on when it’ll be coming to screens yet.
***
The One Who Called Me Cheri is now available for purchase via M-pesa. Visit the Shop Now.
