My January recommendation has to be The Ten Thousand Doors of January by American author, Alix E.Harrow. This novel about a girl called January who discovers doors leading to other worlds was first published in 2019. It is easily available in paperback or as an ebook and, because it consists of two first- person narratives, works particularly well as an audio-book.
In early 20th century America a girl called January Scaller is being brought up as the ward of wealthy businessman and collector, William Cornelius Locke. Her actual father, Julian, is one of Mr Locke’s agents who travel the world searching for rare artefacts so January rarely sees him. Copper-skinned January knows little about her background. Her privileged lifestyle partially protects her from racial discrimination but January sometimes feels that Mr Locke views her as an exotic specimen to show off to his friends in the New England Archaeological Society.
On a trip to Kentucky when she is seven years-old, January discovers a door in the middle of nowhere which seems to lead to a different world. She is only there for a few seconds before Mr Locke calls her back. He seems oddly furious with her and she later finds that the mysterious door has been destroyed. On her return to Locke House, lonely January grows increasingly unhappy about her father’s absences and his refusal to take her with him on his journeys. She consoles herself by reading and writing adventure stories. Her only friends are the local grocer’s son, Samuel, and Bad, the ugly puppy he gives her. A row over whether she can keep the puppy leads January to realize that if she writes things down with enough intensity she can sometimes make them come true.
When January is nearly fifteen, a young African woman named Jane Irimu arrives at Locke House announcing that Julian Scaller has sent her to be his daughter’s paid companion. Jane refuses to tell January much about herself but they do become allies. As January nears her seventeenth birthday two important things happen. Firstly, she finds a leather-bound book entitled The Ten Thousand Doors which she assumes is a present from Mr Locke. Secondly, Mr Locke tells her that her father has been missing for three months and is now presumed to be dead.
A distraught January tries to distract herself by starting to read the strange book which claims to prove that the passages, portals, and entryways common to all mythologies are rooted in physical anomalies that permit users to travel from one world to another. The book begins as a scholarly treatise but then turns into a biographical account of one traveller between worlds – a courageous young woman called Adelaide Lee Larson (Ade) born in in 1866. Ade meets and falls in love with a dark-skinned stranger who claims to have come from another world. After the Door he came through is destroyed, Ade runs away from home to try to find a another Door into her ghost-boy’s world.
Before January can finish reading Ade’s story, her life is changed by a fierce quarrel with Mr Locke. Jane is dismissed and January is confined in an Asylum. Staunch friend Samuel manages to reunite January with her copy of The Ten Thousand Doors. In it she reads a description of the home-world of Ade’s beloved and recognizes that she may be a word-worker of the kind only found in that world. After sinister threats from one of Mr Locke’s friends, January manages to escape from the Asylum by creating a Door with blood and silver. She, Jane and Samuel go on the run, following Julian’s last instructions to seek Arcadia. It is a journey which will take them to new worlds but also subject them to danger and treachery. Someone is trying to destroy all the Doors between worlds. Can January find her lost family and her true home before it is too late?
A synopsis can’t really convey the high quality of this complex, many-layered story. An important point to make is that, inspite of its teenage heroine, The Ten Thousand Doors of January is intended for adult readers of all genders. This is one of the best-written Fantasy novels that I have come across in recent years. It consists of two separate but cunningly entwined narratives – January’s account of her own life and the book-within-a-book which starts as a treatise and develops into a tragic love story. In the course of the plot we slowly learn why these narratives belong together. Having people tell their own stories is a long-standing literary convention. An outstanding feature of this novel is that both narrators are given compelling reasons for writing down their stories. January’s main reason, only revealed near the end, is one I didn’t see coming. January herself has a wonderfully distinctive voice. She describes her experiences in fresh and original language which makes all the worlds she encounters seem real and vivid.
This book is, among other things, a story about the power of storytelling and particularly about Fantasy. January’s form of magic is essentially the power of a great storyteller to remake the world. The idea of doors that open into other worlds has been present in myths and folktales for thousands of years and has become a common motif in Fantasy fiction. Like most children, after reading such stories as Alice in Wonderland or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I longed to escape from my prosaic life into a more wonderful and exciting world. Some critics condemn Fantasy for being escapist but as Tolkien noted in Tree and Leaf, it is mainly gaolers who object to people escaping. The worlds that January learns about or visits are not very fantastical. They are as culturely different and strange as parts of our own world were to each other before the age of mass travel. What they offer are possibilities of new ways of thinking and living. These infinite possibilities are gloriously celebrated by Harrow but she also writes with a sharp awareness of the potential dangers when cultures meet and clash and the cost to individuals of breaking free from the society they were brought up in.
Some elements of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, such as Doors to other worlds that are only open for a limited time, a sinister conspiracy of the rich and powerful, and the idea of unrecognized aliens living amongst us, are found in much Fantasy and Science Fiction. There is no shortage of exciting moments in this story and some rather melodramatic ones – I’m not sure that this plot needed a vampire on top of everything else that January has to deal with. What makes Harrow’s work special is that she treats extraordinary events with emotional realism. This story ends on a positive note but it is threaded through with sadness. Violence – even in self-defence – leaves psychic scars. January is failed in one way or another by all the adults closest to her and has to learn to forgive them for this. Jane is an example of someone whose temporary escape into a world that made her happy, has left her too embittered to fully engage with her everyday world. Julian is too caught up in his search for his long-lost love to give his daughter the support she needs. Ade is admirably free-spirited but her constant yearning for adventure causes pain for her family. Escape comes at a price and it is sometimes other people who pay it.
One of the most interesting aspects of The Ten Thousand Doors of January is Harrow’s treatment of the complicated relationship between January and her self-appointed guardian. Greedy and selfish Mr Locke (a rather too obviously symbolic name) could have come across as a sterotyped villain but, heart-breakingly, January can’t entirely stop loving him. From an early age, she has projected onto him her longings for an affectionate and reliable father figure and this isn’t something that would just vanish when she discovers unpleasant truths about her guardian. January rightly does not forgive Locke for many of the things he does or plans to do but in some ways she remains his daughter. Locke is allowed to make quite a good case for the potential dangers of Doors between worlds and he is obsessed with moulding January into the person he wants her to be. This warped form of love is not so different from the possessive way that many parents behave. Thankfully, by the end of the story January is very much her own person. She is a heroine I urge you to meet and there are more wonderful characters to discover in Harrow’s later books such The Once and Future Witches (2020) or her Fractured Fables series (2021-2022). Until next month….
Geraldine