This week's novella is Every Heart a Doorway, post-portal-fantasy by Seanan McGuire.
Children disappear into other realms, sometimes they're gone for years, sometimes they spend years in another world and return just a moment after they left. Some worlds are fantastical, some horrifying. And when these children return changed an unable to adapt to the life they once had, they're sent to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a boarding school that tells the children's parents that they'll help the children overcome their delusion, but where they tell the children that everything they experienced is real. They just need to learn to move on.
This is a collision between two concepts I really like: the "after the fairy tale" story and "these people need therapy." These kids come back and of course they're going to have problems. They've left the world where they felt they belonged behind and now they may never get back. No one believes them, and they don't relate to their lives or their parents. So I love that the Home for Wayward Children has group therapy after dinner, with people who believe them and help them work through their loss.
Way to be responsible, Home for Wayward Children!
I also love that the boarding school has standard academic classes (like math) in addition to electives about mapping the different worlds that people have gone to. And the different worlds are so varied and creative. We get snip-its of the children's adventures and each one could be its own novella. (In fact I think McGuire wrote some prequels.) The narrative spends very little time on these classes, because that would be dull, but they are acknowledged, and I appreciate that.
Way to be responsible again, Home for Wayward Children!
It's super short, so you should check it out.
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Next week: All of Us and Everything, a quirky family drama by Bridget Asher.
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