MARCH BOOK OF THE MONTHThe Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
Sixteen-year-old Odile vies for a coveted seat on an elite council that decides who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. 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 know Odile-is going to die. Sworn to secrecy to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the top candidate. Yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, jeopardizing the future and her place in it.
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interviewQ&A With Scott Alexander Howard
This March, we spoke to Scott Alexander Howard about his debut novel, The Other Valley. We discussed philosophy, world-building, and spending more time doing what you love.
“What’s worth destroying your life for? What could push you to abandon the societal rules and systems? What lengths would you take to save something or someone you love?”
BOOK Review by GANNAH ELSOULThe Other Valley is one of the many dystopian stories that combines speculative fiction and time travel, and yet it succeeds in avoiding clichés, presenting us with magical realism that’s wholly original. The world is made up from a series of valleys, a series of repeating realities. To the west, the valley is twenty years in the past, while to the east, life has moved twenty years ahead. Odile, our main character, is a teenager trying to work towards a position on the Conseil, the institution responsible for controlling passage into other valleys, when she’s accidentally hit by a tragic reveal.
