The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
A literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town–except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.
For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)
The Reason
My library featured this book aggressively, and it also became my in-person bookclub’s BOTM as well as a buddy read on another bookclub.
The Quotes
“Ambition might be like a living organism, reliant on nurture to grow. With some encouragement, mine had protruded from the dirt, a tiny shoot crawling toward the light.”
“It’s not bad to want comfort, or respect from others. It matters more than you think.”
“What I felt was a kind of thrilling sadness, something I have since experienced when looking out over other open spaces and lonely boundaries: an emotion that lives on the desolate edge of the known.”
The Narrator(s)
Cindy Kay. Some parts of the narration were quite whispery and it was really difficult to make out what she was saying, but I did enjoy her narration and the way she voiced the characters.
My Thoughts
I’m not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I thought it was a very interesting premise and I enjoyed a lot of the philosophical discussion about time travel and interferring with the timelines. On the other hand, I found it difficult to like any of the characters, and the whole experience of reading it was quite painful for me.
The experience of reading a book is often just as important to me as the story itself, and that’s why I enjoy buddy reads and book discussions so much. In this case, the audiobook was difficult to listen to, so I tried to switch to a print copy, only to find a lack of chapters and quotation marks so you never know where you are in the book or who is speaking. I ended up going back to the audiobook because at least the narrator’s voice acting identified the characters’ speech. Intellectually, I like that the author made that choice because the whole idea of timelessness in a book about time travel is quite brilliant. Experientially, it just didn’t work for me.
I did get very invested in the story and I kept wanting to know what happens next. There were a lot of things that don’t make sense outside of this world bubble, but I really liked it as a thought experiment. I enjoyed the idea and I think it was well-written, but I don’t think I will ever want to come back to it.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
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