The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

Atlantic Books

9781838959654

384pp

Imagine you live in a valley. A valley that looks like the valley to the east and the valley to the west. But imagine that if you were to go one way, you would step 20 years into the future, and the other way, 20 years into the past. Odile lives in such a valley, and when she sees something from the future, she is faced with a terrible decision: let it happen, or change the course of history.

A spooky what-if story, this dabbles in fantasy the same way Emily St John Mandel does in Station Eleven; based in reality, but with added extras that make you wonder. I love this kind of genre, where reality and the “magical” blend into something entirely plausible. There is no magic is Odile’s valley, of course, just the very mundane, apart from the other valleys. There, you are set the philosophical question: if you knew, what would you do?

I was absolutely gripped by this book. I raced through it, wanting to know Odile’s decision and its consequences. I was a curious as she, as a teenager, then as full of despair as an adult. The fear, the hope, the wondering, was almost unbearable at times. Every step, every look, mattered and it suddenly makes you question your own decisions, your own mortality. What if I had made a different decision at that moment? Would I be a completely different person now?

If a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world, is there a tsunami on the other? The blurb on the front of the book mentions Ishiguro and Murakami, and I couldn’t agree more. Think Never Let Me Go and you have some idea of the grief and hope that lives in The Other Valley. Alexander’s evocative story produces a great amount of emotion, but doesn’t let you down on the action either. The dramatic conclusion will have you gasping.

There are moments you keep waiting for, moments you know (or think you know) are coming, and yet when they happen they are still surprising or seemingly unimportant. But everything is important in this world. Every decision, every movement, has consequences, but to live with the conscious reality of those consequences just one valley over, must cause a great mental burden. Indeed, Odile lives under the shadow of this every day.

If I had one gripe, it would be that I wanted more about the structure of the community. There is mention of a religious sect, a ruling class, and so on and so forth, but they are only touched on. This book could have afforded to be 50 pages longer, just to explain how the community functions. But it doesn’t take away from the quality of the story itself. Full of action, romance, derring do, it’s a pleasure to read.