Book review: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (April 2016, Tor.com)
For fans of: The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nancy is never the same again after she discovers the doorway to the Halls of the Dead. When she returns from the world a changed person, her worried parents send Nancy to a boarding school for kids who also discovered similarly fantastical and magical doorways. In Every Heart a Doorway, a novella by award-winning novelist Seanan McGuire, the students of Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children are forced to confront their blurred definitions of reality and home—all in the midst of an unsettling tragedy.

I read this novella because it sounded similar to my childhood. Okay, not literally, but when I was young, discovering doorways to other worlds was the stuff of dreams. I once camped out in my grandmother's bedroom closet hoping to discover Hogwarts. I felt a lot of anxiety growing up, and imagining a doorway to another world was a soothing escape. These were the kinds of emotions and themes I expected to pop up in Every Heart a Doorway.

But the novella was not at all what I expected. Admittedly, I went into it with a lot of preconceived notions, thinking it would be a charming and heart-wrenching story about childhood and loss. I really wanted to love the novella—the beautiful title and the imaginative premise were enough to get me on board—but I was ultimately left with a lot of questions about McGuire's story.

The novella's premise is exciting and original, but the short length of the story, paired with a cast of underdeveloped characters, doesn't live up to McGuire's otherwise thought-provoking idea. In the beginning of the story, for instance, McGuire introduces a Miss Peregrine-esque character, Eleanor West, who is full of boundless wisdom having taken care of generations of children who survived the doorways. But West's presence is hardly felt throughout the story, only popping up during tense moments to offer whimsical one-liners. It's a shame because her character is one of the most interesting in the book.

With that said, McGuire's world-building abilities made up for where the characters lacked in dimension. Each doorway and each world felt original (there's also a funny jab at C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia that genuinely made me laugh at loud.) McGuire invents interesting concepts of measuring time and ways of telling direction. With world classifications like Wicked, Nonsense, Logic and Virtue, the terminology used to classify each doorway felt reminiscent of the nonsensical fairy tale language of Alice in Wonderland. It's also worth mentioning the novella portrays several characters with diverse identities. Nancy openly talks about being asexual—something I've personally never seen depicted in a story targeted toward a younger audience—which is important since many readers may see themselves reflected in the story. 

Although McGuire challenges our expectations of storytelling, ultimately, the journey in Every Heart a Doorway was cut short way too soon. I have a hard time calling it a novella when it felt like a short story. Although I wasn't as excited about this book as I hoped, I'm still interested in this world enough to read the sequel, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, which appears to explore some character backstory (hurray!) This first installment felt more like a teaser into a larger, complex world, and I'm curious enough to see where the characters end up. There's so much more left to be explored and explained—and I hope McGuire will take us there.