Book #78 of 2024:
The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
An astonishing debut novel that introduces one of the most original conceptions of time travel that I’ve ever encountered, yet then wisely waits to fully deploy it until the very end. For the majority of the plot, we are instead lingering in the present moment with the heroine, experiencing her teenage hopes and setbacks and taking in the peculiar details of her reality. (Peculiar to us, that is — like The Giver or Never Let Me Go, this title masterfully and naturalistically presents its setting through characters who have grown up never questioning it, though the contours will prove wholly alien to readers.)
Essentially, this story is set in a small isolated community bordered on either side by its own past and future. Crossing to the east would bring a person back into town but twenty years further ahead, while crossing to the west would deliver them the same distance backwards. As far as anyone knows, that situation stretches on in both directions indefinitely; there is no true outside world or even any remote idea of such a thing in the characters’ minds. And within the span of this text, at least, no external presence ever does intrude on the valley(s) and the inhabitants’ particular existence therein.
To preserve the timeline, travel is highly restricted. Armed guards patrol the borders, and a prestigious council weighs visa petitions delicately, allowing occasional masked visitors to see their loved ones from afar — either those to the west who have passed away in their own time or those to the east whom the petitioners can’t reasonably expect to live to see grown. Such visits are dangerous and must be carefully coordinated on both sides, but because they clearly remain allowed later on, they cannot be outlawed today.
It’s a fascinating high-concept premise, but one that would be bloodless without the living and breathing individuals at its core. We watch as the sixteen-year-old protagonist comes of age in this strange place, forging new friendships and a budding potential relationship whilst striving to be chosen for a career among the elite decision-makers who evaluate visitation requests. She’s also burdened by the accidental insight that the young man she’s drawn to will inevitably soon die, since she’s recognized the older versions of his parents as the obscured figures watching the schoolyard on a recent visit.
Although the action eventually picks up, sending the now-adult lead on a desperate and illegal quest to save her long-dead friend and reorient her own life accordingly, this is primarily not a thrilling adventure tale like most entries in the science-fiction genre. It’s rather a slow and sadly wistful look at youth and grown-up regrets over squandered potential and the ways people change over time, with or without improper knowledge of future events. The specter of the neighboring valleys adds a melancholic tinge to the first half of the novel leading up to the boy’s death, after which we jump forward to follow his bereft paramour as a jaded woman in her thirties, for whom nothing has ever gone according to plan. Given the setup, it’s predictable enough that she’ll ultimately be driven to attempt the journey back to her younger days, but author Scott Alexander Howard continues to spool out the narrative gradually for us, earning the character-based resolution that could have seemed mandated by the needs of the plot alone.
I won’t spoil the actual ending in terms of the results of her mission, but it’s almost inconsequential compared to the overall effect of everything in the work building up to that point. Suffice to say, I loved this book the entire way through, and will now eagerly await whatever its talented writer devises next.
[Content warning for gun violence, domestic abuse, and alcohol abuse.]
★★★★★
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