Alix E. Harrow’s debut novel is about a girl named January, who grows up in the early 20th century in Locke House, an extremely extravagant mansion in rural Vermont. When I first heard of this book, it piqued my interest because of the title, and I had assumed that the doors would have something to do with the house itself. The story seemed like it would be a portal fantasy but it's more of a family drama with a sprinkling of fantasy and political underpinnings. It seemed like an ordinary fantasy novel. However, Harrow had set her eyes on a more ambitious project, a novel that seemed to try to encompass several genres all at once. Perhaps because of this, the novel felt a little scatterbrained, containing the seeds of a lot of different ideas but none that were fully focused. The pacing was a bit off, too, with the last third going by in whirlwind speed compared to the rest of the novel. Sort of like me when I have a term paper deadline, honestly.
I also did not realize that this was a YA novel. Had I known that, some characters’ actions and personalities might have annoyed me less. The prose could be purple at times, but for the most part I was fine with it; it was lyrical at times, and occasionally loquacious at others, but overall it was fine. Besides the main character, January, there are a handful of important side characters; however, they show up in brief flashes or glimpses, and so you never get a strong sense of attachment or concern about any of them. The main character, I suspect, was also crafted to be relatable to people who are not me—which made it hard for me to care about what January was going through… not to mention the fact that was about seventeen, but acted with a lot less maturity at times. I don’t know if I can say any of the characters had a lasting positive impression on me throughout the book. (I'm not a dog person, so maybe if this book had a cat instead, I could have claimed at least one.) First-person narration with a slightly annoying character never works out well.
The themes were at times trying to be philosophical, other times mysterious, and overall hard to pin down. I would guess that Harrow had a lot of brilliant ideas and wanted them all to shine through in her debut novel; but instead it felt disorganized and overreaching. At times, you get a sort of historical realism, bringing up the characters’ complexions in the context of 20th century United States, only to relate it to the fact of their oppression. Their race was never incidental to their characters; it was always brought up to make a point of their oppression or low status, which felt tokenizing to me. SFF could always use more diversity, but there’s a way to write diverse characters without only bringing attention to their societal status and making them indistinguishable otherwise. Same could be said for the historical setting, too.
Occasionally you get fantasy, with talks of thousands of other worlds, but no straightforward world building or focus on any single one of them. There are hints of this with a certain world, but even that is secondary to the plot. I love worldbuilding and plot most in fantasy novels, and both were alright in this novel but not as aspirational as the author intended, perhaps. (Also, some plot ‘twists’ were extremely obvious… I was wondering if they were even meant to be twists, but perhaps this kind of thing happens more in YA than in adult fiction.) Other reviewers talked about the innovation of Harrow’s storytelling about Doors and portals, but perhaps I was less impressed because… I’ve seen that theme before, several times. There isn’t anything in the novel that felt truly ‘novel’ if you’ve read the likes of Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, or Philip Pullman.
This was an ambitious effort for a debut novel, and I can respect Harrow’s efforts in writing it; writing, as the book tells us, is no easy task after all. Still, there were a lot of long threads that did not always resolve in the most satisfying way; a lot of seeds of hopeful themes or character development that didn’t grow as much as they could have; and many other trifles that I had with this book. Ultimately, this book really struck a chord for a lot of people, so perhaps I’m just not its target audience. I did enjoy moments in this book here and there—otherwise I would have DNFed—but this did not live up to everything I wanted it to be.
