Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests
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. … 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.
PRAISE FOR EVERY HEART A DOORWAY
“Seanan McGuire has long been one of the smartest writers around, and with this novella we can easily see that her heart is as big as her brain. We know this story isn’t true, but it is truth.” — Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series (TV’s True Blood)
“Seanan McGuire once again demonstrates her intimate knowledge of the human heart in a powerful fable of loss, yearning and damaged children.” — Paul Cornell, author of London Falling and Witches of Lychford
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This was a strange, disturbing, but also incredibly awesome story involving children that enter doors to other worlds and then for some reason return back to their old lives, longing for nothing but to go back “home.” Eleanor West runs a school for those children, teaching them how to exist in the world if they have to stay, and covering their absence if they manage to return home. Nancy is the new girl, grateful to be away from parents who don’t understand her, until her roommate shows up dead. Then several more gruesome murders occur and Nancy and several new friends have to figure out what is happening so they can put a stop to it and save the school. Some of the classmates were kind, some were nasty, but they all had experienced something they didn’t want to let go of, and were longing to return to. I really enjoyed the read and look forward to reading the rest of the series.
Such a strange little book, but I really, really liked it. Certainly not for everyone, but I love this kind of story. Started book two immediately!
What happened to kids like Alice and Dorothy when they returned from their adventures in Wonderland and Oz? They go to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children with dozens of other fantasy land child exiles.
“We don’t teach you how to forget. We teach you how to move on.”
I was lucky enough to have an innocence childhood where the grit and wickedness of the world was revealed slowly. Not all children have that luxury. On the surface, “Every Heart a Doorway” is about the very entertaining concept of a home where children who have been whisked away to fantasy lands only to be cast out to reality, are able to guided back into a normal life, surrounded by other children who have had similar adventures. But underneath, I felt like this was about the children who’ve had to face dark realities before they were ready, whether that was abuse, tragedy, or social cruelty. Maybe a reality so cruel they create a fantasy world to escape into. Once you’ve survived that experience, how do you move on? How does your family deal with you?
“Their love wanted to fix her, and refused to see that she wasn’t broken.”
This book won the 2017 Hugo and Locus for Best Novella. It also won the 2016 Nebula for Best Novella. It’s short and the prose is straightforward, but Author Seanan McGuire slips in little flourishes at just the right time. For such a short work, McGuire takes on a great deal. There are undertones of abuse and the challenge of self-acceptance of gender change and asexuality.
“We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
The story gets dark about halfway as McGuire ups the stakes and moves away from a simple teen angst into a harsher tale with life and death consequences. We rush to a no-nonsense finish that wraps up the primary mystery but leaves plenty of offshoots for the inevitable series.
My favorite aspect of this is the “meta-ness” of it. The concept of these children who “fall thru a mirror/rabbit hole/doorway,” coming together to make sense of their lives is the best part of the story. But along the way, McGuire finds some wonderful insights and truths that I’m sure hit home with many who have dealt with bleak realities.
“You’re nobody’s doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”
A taut story, smartly written about what comes after the escape to fantasy realms and how one decides what is ‘home.’
This novella was a choice for our book club for a month that we wouldn’t have a lot of time to read. It’s hard-to-impossible to find in libraries, so I bought it — and thoroughly enjoyed it. I still enjoy speculative fiction, when it’s well done. I had expected this might be very similar to Miss Perigrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” (which I also enjoyed) but it was thoroughly original, and well-crafted.
The premise of this was genius and I SO connected with it. And I love McGuire’s writing. Can’t wait to get a chance to read more of this series!
The concept behind Every Heart A Doorway is quite brilliant.
When the fairy tale is done, where do the children from them go? The ones who disappear down rabbit holes, or through the back of a wardrobe, what happens to them next?
This is the story that explores that, in a school that is a kind of limbo for children as they wait to go through their next doorway, the one that takes them to the land that will be their perfect fit.
It’s weird and delightful and enchanting. More than that, it looks at these children and what they are looking for themselves. What they want. What they need. What they desire. What they would call home.
Wrapped around a murder mystery, it counters the gossamer touch of fairy tales with the harsh reality of being a child out of place. It tackles LGBT issues and more.
For some, this will be a book that hits them right in the soul. It didn’t quite get me the same way, but I found much to admire.
I will confess though, I listened to the audiobook version and I urge you if you want to tackle this book to read the words on the page instead. The narrator for the audiobook had such a monotone that it stole the magic from the words and rendered them dreary. It was a chore to listen to at times, and didn’t serve the book well.
So turn the pages and hear the voice in your own head instead, it’ll serve you better.
I enjoyed this book. I felt there was a lot of work-building within world-building going on. It made for a tricking plot and oftentimes made it hard to follow. It’s a darker story about tends. It reminded me of Miss Peregrine’s house in that child often experience more darkness than adults know and it shapes the world around them. In this case, it shapes what world they go to. There’s a lot of potential here, but I feel it’s still early times with so many characters with different storylines to explore. I do look forward to seeing where the series ARC will go.
This is a wonderful read and offers a great world. I wish it was a longer read. I feel like more content would help expand and build the world more, which was a bit lacking.
Wow. I really loved this book, and it was such an interesting take on the age-old story of children falling into rabbit holes, finding hidden doors that lead to other worlds, and stepping through looking glass. What happens to these children when they come home? It’s a question I never really asked myself, for all that I’ve always loved Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia and have spent much of my childhood looking for my own adventure into another world in mirrors, wardrobes, and shadowy gaps between trees in the woods. This was such a short read, but so involving, and though it’s part of a series, this book is pretty self-contained and you could easily stop after this and have a complete story. You probably won’t want to stop here, though. The characters were life-like and well fleshed out, and while I figured out pretty quickly the who of the mystery, the details of the why eluded me and there was more than one final twist at the end that surprised me. Highly recommend to any lover of fantasy who ever looked for a magic doorway to take them somewhere else.
Crazy dark, yet somehow reads whimsical thanks to Seanan McGuire’s masterful writing. Earnest characters speak in very real, sometimes shocking fashion while weaving the reader away from–and perhaps toward?– those looming, titular doorways. Don’t let the short length deter you, this book is perfection.
So recognizable that it hurts in a good way.
If you grew up reading books like the Chronicles of Narnia and wishing you’d find a doorway to another world, I think you’ll enjoy this one. Unique premise, breathtaking prose. Kept me thinking about it for a long time afterward.
One of my favorite books of all time! I would recommend it to anyone
Okay, hang on, I’ve gotta take a second to return to the real world. Is this a logical world or high nonsense? I can’t remember. All I know is wherever it is, I don’t want to be here anymore, I want to be where all the Wayward Children have been!
It is IMPRESSIVE how much ground this book covers for only being 170 pages long!
Worlds of the dead, worlds of rainbows, worlds where the sky is checkerboarded and where breathing isn’t necessary. I feel like I did acid before reading this book, except, for a book with so many fantastical and trippy elements, it was oddly very linear to follow. And succinct (I can’t get over how short this book is)!
In Every Heart a Doorway we meet Nancy, a teenager who’s just returned from a world of the dead and is bent on finding a way back. But because doors sometimes never return, Nancy might be stuck back on what I presume to be Earth (or a similar place) forever. The book opens when she arrives at a boarding school for Wayward Children, disguised as an inpatient therapy center. There, she meets Sumi, the roommate who had been in a high nonsense world for years and is BY FAR the greatest character I’ve ever met.
BONUS for readers interested in diverse characters: Nancy is asexual.
Everything seems mostly fine and dandy until students start dropping like flies. Like, brutally. And Nancy finds herself caught up in trying to figure out who done it.
I had some serious feels for Nancy. The way her longing was portrayed—the way every character’s longing was portrayed, I guess!—had my heart in knots. Each one of the Wayward Children felt out of place in “the real world” and felt like a piece of themselves was missing upon their return. It’s something many of us can relate to: feeling alone, feeling like we don’t belong, wondering where our real place in the world is. Reading Every Heart a Doorway, it’s easy to see yourself as one of the Wayward Children, wondering when your door is going to popup and take you where you really belong!
I don’t know what else to say about this one without giving too much away. If you’re thinking about reading it, you should. What do you got to lose? IT’S ONLY 170 PAGES LONG, PEOPLE! In fact, I’m appalled you haven’t read it already. 😉
A very interesting view and very fascinating. Highly recommended.
The first novella in this wonderful fantasy series. This book sports a long list of awards and for good reason! This book opens with a nod to some of the most iconic fantasy books ever written and then follows with a story that is worthy of joining them.
A magical invitation to “what happens next” with a whodunnit.
Although it’s a clever explanation for the disappearance and return of children, this book seems more likely to appeal to troubled adolescents than adults. Similar to Alice (down the rabbit hole), or Dorothy in Oz, the supposition is that the children who had similar adventures now have to be placed in a special home until they stop insisting that their adventures were real. But they were real and all they want to do is return to the bazaar fantastic life they were living. I gave it 5 stars for originality. and the author’s descriptions of the various lands and landscapes involved
It’s better than therapy
Meh, takes awhile to go nowhere.