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covergirlbooks 's review for:
The Other Valley
by Scott Alexander Howard
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I wasn’t planning to read this book. I was looking at upcoming events at a local bookstore, and saw that there was a book club meeting for this title the same day. It was about 4 hours away. I decided to try the preview of the ebook on Libby.
It sucked me in immediately, and I borrowed the copy. I did not make it to the discussion, but I wound up finishing The Other Valley in 2 days.
I think you also deserve to go into this story without knowing anything, so I won’t go into plot specifics.
One of the first things I noticed was the absence of quotation marks for dialogue. But once you’re in the flow, this falls away, and it’s relatively easy to follow who’s speaking with whom. Howard’s prose is so observational and poetic on a micro level, I stopped caring that the dialogue didn’t have quotation marks.
“I concluded my essay by vowing that, as a future conseiller, I would advise petitioners to seek whatever closure they needed here in their own valley, which is to say, in the safer pastures of ordinary grief.”
“Instead of waiting for my mother outside the Hôtel de Ville, I walked several times around the whole square, sloshing my feet restlessly through the dry maple leaves that were growing into piles at the edges.”
This story is grounded in magical realism, and the magic creates a dystopian effect on the society.
The ending felt a tad rushed to me…
There’s a feeling of unease that grows during this story, and even the final chapters were tense. I think I was hoping for more release at the end of the book, to see just a little more stabilizing plot on the other side of the resolution as reassurance.
It sucked me in immediately, and I borrowed the copy. I did not make it to the discussion, but I wound up finishing The Other Valley in 2 days.
I think you also deserve to go into this story without knowing anything, so I won’t go into plot specifics.
One of the first things I noticed was the absence of quotation marks for dialogue. But once you’re in the flow, this falls away, and it’s relatively easy to follow who’s speaking with whom. Howard’s prose is so observational and poetic on a micro level, I stopped caring that the dialogue didn’t have quotation marks.
“I concluded my essay by vowing that, as a future conseiller, I would advise petitioners to seek whatever closure they needed here in their own valley, which is to say, in the safer pastures of ordinary grief.”
“Instead of waiting for my mother outside the Hôtel de Ville, I walked several times around the whole square, sloshing my feet restlessly through the dry maple leaves that were growing into piles at the edges.”
This story is grounded in magical realism, and the magic creates a dystopian effect on the society.
The ending felt a tad rushed to me…
There’s a feeling of unease that grows during this story, and even the final chapters were tense. I think I was hoping for more release at the end of the book, to see just a little more stabilizing plot on the other side of the resolution as reassurance.