AMONG OTHERS by JO WALTON (2010)

Jo Walton creatively combines a fantasy about magic and fairies with the narrator's obsessive commentary about the science fiction of the 1970s to produce a novel that is bound to delight the fans of both genres. I know that I was enchanted.

The narrator, Morweena, is a 15-year-old Welsh girl who has been left with a crippled leg by the car accident which killed her twin sister. The two had been fleeing their mad mother, who happens to be a witch. As the story begins, Morweena has been placed in a boarding school in England, bereft at the loss of her sister and severed from the fairies who had aided her in surviving her mother's wrath. Her only solace is reading the kind of literature she loves--fantasy and science fiction.

The book is structured in the form of Morweena's diary, in which she records not only her loneliness and despair, but also her insightful commentary about the books she reads. Her life takes a more cheerful turn when she is invited to join a science fiction book club, and the diary then includes the club's discussions. But danger is never far away, because her mother may still be intent on destroying her.

Walton never falters in presenting the fictional diary in the entirely believable voice of a precocious teenager. This is a story about loss and acceptance, about growing up, about feeling different and out of place, about the healing power of literature...and about magic.

This is a perfect book for those who read and loved the fantasy and science fiction of the '70s. It combines a matter-of-fact story about fairies, reminiscent of the tone of John Crowley's Little, Big (one of my favorite books ever), with a multitude of references to and discussions about science fiction novels of that era, most of which I read back then. I don't suppose it would be nearly so interesting to those not familiar with the literature of the fantastic, but long-time geeks and nerds like me are bound to love it.

Among Others won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the British Fantasy Award.