Welcome friend! Time travel is one of my favourite tropes to explore and The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard is an intimate look at our influence of time when we are taught that events are already set in place. The story of three valleys separated physically but also chronologically by twenty years, here is what this book is about:
The Other Valley
Scott Alexander Howard | Goodreads
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.
Content notes include alcoholism, bullying, child death, death, gun violence, sexism, suicide.
The Other Valley – Review
The Other Valley is told from the perspective of Odile. In the first part of the book, she is sixteen years old. A lonely teenager who keeps to herself, an incident of bullying leads her to make some new friends. This age is pivotal in the town she lives in. It is when students decide the careers they will pursue for the rest of their lives.
The Fate of Odile
Odile’s mother wants her to be a conseil. She believes in Odile, though she isn’t the most emotionally available parent. The two aren’t close and continue to be in each other’s lives as an obligation.
The defining moment in Odile’s life is when she accidentally recognizes two visitors from the valley to the east, they are twenty years older than the people she knows. Based on her knowledge of visits related to bereavement, she concludes correctly that Edme would pass away in the coming months but what she fails to predict is the timing of the demise and this affects her deeply. In the time that they are close friends, she develops feelings for him and, later, when he is gone, there is a lingering disappointment of not using her time wisely.
Though she is brilliant and has been doing very well in the Conseil classes, she abandons that path and signs up to be a cadet with the border patrol, the worst job she could have chosen, the one people who can’t do better are expected to go into. Her relationship with her mother and others deteriorates and existence goes back to being lonely. She passes her time by carving in wood, thinking about her life.
It has been drilled into her through her education that outcomes should not be changed and any interference in one valley can have unprecedented effects on the other. As time passes and Odile grows older, she wonders about the night Edme was last seen and what she herself saw. When her circumstances deteriorate further in the sexist world of the gendarmerie, she decides to take matters into her own hands and try something different.
I liked Odile as the protagonist. At sixteen, she is faced with a tough reality and it is not surprising that she takes Edme’s death the way she does. The things that befall her are unfortunate and she does the best she can with her but underneath, she is always wondering what could have been different. I liked her journey from start to end.
The Operation of Time Travel
Time travel in The Other Valley is synonymous to crossing the border from one valley into another. There are professions built around this travel, those of the guards called gendarmerie, the people who look at appeals for travel, the Conseil and the perceptions around who ends up these two professions – those who have no better choice and those who are the best. In some ways, the cut throat competition of the town reminded me of the Indian education system. There is corporal punishment, there is berating, the teachers do not hide who they think are weak students and will not do well. In the case of those who fail the Conseil vetting process, there is a cap on the jobs that they can take, as is evident through Odile’s mother.
Interference has unpredictable consequences in all valleys and hence, its punishment is death. Conseils have to weigh each case in terms of risk, make sure that the visitors they allow from one valley into another will not lead to change in how life is supposed to play out. The visitors’ true identity cannot be known to anyone as this knowledge can be dangerous, as Odile comes to realize. Many precautions are taken around the timing of the visits, the attire of the visitors and how the visit went. Gendarmerie must eliminate any threat at the border and report how the visit went.
The system is fleshed out well and has a gravity to it. In the first part when Odile is preparing to be Conseil, the responsibility of the profession and the consequences of anything going wrong are drilled into her.
The Plot and Storytelling
The Other Valley is a literary exploration of time travel. It is about breaking free of the stories and narratives we have been told and taking action. The dejected manner in which Odile purses life is hard to read in the second and third parts. The content also portrays sexism, bullying and betrayal in friendships. But all of this is for a purpose.
It was an interesting thought exercise to put myself in Odile’s shoes when she is older and to think of her younger self as someone else entirely. To want more for her. I felt remnants of the multiverse theory in the story as Odile grappled with her choices in the past and the pivotal moment when she had the opportunity to choose differently but she didn’t know when she was young. The storytelling does a great job of bringing it all together at the end.
Overall, The Other Valley is a fascinating exploration of growing old and the choices that, if we could, we would make differently. It is not a comfortable read and that makes sense for the situation that it portrays. To know that someone will die and to be left behind, shaken by the fact that their time came too soon, can change the very course of life, time travel possible or not. This book beautifully integrates the challenges of time travel and influence through Odile’s story.
If you are looking for a book that will make you think, pick up this one. Add it to your Goodreads or grab a copy today. It is available to buy now! The discussion questions at the back are great to further explore the themes in this book. I might read it again in the future.
The Other Valley has joined the ranks of my must-read time travel books with The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Psychology of Time Travel.
Many thanks to the publisher for a copy of the book for an honest review.
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