2020/040: The Ten Thousand Doors of January -- Alix E Harrow

There’s only one way to run away from your own story, and that’s to sneak into someone else’s. [p. 92]

January Scaller, growing up as the ward of a wealthy industrialist in the first years of the twentieth century, is at once privileged and deprived. She misses her father, who roams the world collecting antiquities for Mr Locke; she never knew her mother; she endures a succession of nannies and tutors whose care for her does not extend to affection; and she is painfully aware that she is treated as a curiosity, set apart by the colour of her skin and the texture of her hair.

But January is already aware of the power of words. When she discovers a book called The Ten Thousand Doors she is drawn into the story of a man and a woman from different worlds who fall in love. And perhaps she has already glimpsed another world, through a ramshackle door standing alone in a field.

It took me a couple of tries to get into this novel: my initial, rather curmudgeonly, impression was that it was a fantasy novel for people who didn't read much fantasy! I think this is because it explores some of the tropes of YA fantasy: the lonely child who hides in books, the general oppression of that child, the discovery of a portal to another place ... January, though very young at the start of the book, becomes a likeable and determined heroine, defying society's expectations and refusing to accept her guardian's plans for her. She inspires loyalty in others, which is her salvation: she discovers her own abilities, and works to improve them.

And the story told here is larger than one young woman's coming of age and self-emancipation. There are doors between worlds, and doors are there to let things in: change, revolution, variety, magic. January wants to open doors: the conservative faction wants to keep them closed, to maintain the status quo and the patriarchal power of industrialists, colonists, oligarchs. Ranged against that faction are January and her allies: women, people of colour, scholars, wanderers, the displaced and dispossessed.

I especially liked the typographic elements (is that the right word?) of the novel: January's perceptions of the shapes of words, as well as their meaning. The capital V in Villain 'like dagger points or sharpened teeth'; 'that P, like a woman with her hand on her hip' ...

Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges... [p. 6]