‘Every Heart a Doorway’ Takes Us Beyond the End

Most of us, at some point, wished we could open a magic door and find ourselves in a wonderful Elsewhere, our own Narnia, or Where the Wild Things Are, or the 13^th Reality, or Oz, or Wonderland. These and many other worlds, accessible to us through books, create rich, vibrant worlds that so many of us would like to visit, to become part of, to adventure through. Countless authors have shown us these doors, and we travel with the protagonists, sharing their struggles, their wonder, and their joy.

However, there’s one thing that nearly never gets explored in these tales—what happens when they come back? When they return to our everyday, mundane world, a world devoid of magic, of understanding? What’s beyond the ‘end’? Seanan McGuire explores this in the first book of her Wayward Children series, Every Heart a Doorway (Tor, 2016).

We meet our protagonist, Nancy, a pale teenaged girl recently returned from her world, the Halls of the Dead. Her parents think she’s either had a breakdown or is delusional in some way. As parents at their wits’ end do, they enroll her at the Eleanor West School for Wayward Children, which promises to “take the broken children and make them whole again.” We soon learn that every student has had their own experiences in different worlds (some dark, some light, some logical, some nonsense), and all were treated similarly upon their return. Eleanor, who went through her own door when she was younger, is there to take them in and help them both process what has happened and help them transition back to the real world (if they so choose).

Atop her richly conceived central conceit, McGuire introduces us to a wide variety of characters, from Nancy’s roommate Sumi to the beautiful, intelligent and kind Kade to Jack and Jill, twins who journeyed to a dark world together. As the narrative progresses, a mystery begins to unfold as misfortune falls on the school. And since the new is nearly always viewed with suspicion, wary eyes turn to Nancy as the situation unfolds. To say more would give too much of the plot away, so I’ll avoid it here.

McGuire’s writing provides thorough, meticulous world-building, for which she is to be commended. Nothing here is thrown together, and the rich tapestry she weaves makes it all the more jarring when said misfortune arrives. The students and teachers, while initially presented in quick brush strokes, are given time to develop into fully rounded, dynamic characters that the reader cares about. And she does all this in just 169 pages.

It’s a short book, and a quick read, but with such depth and focus that you’ll feel as if you found your own door, and it opened on the steps of Ms. West’s school. We all feel wayward at times, and some books feel like coming home. This is one of them.