The Door That Opened Into Somewhere

Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Young January Scaller lives a life straight out of a post-Victorian pulp romance: while her archeologist father globetrots for exotic artifacts, she lives with her father’s sponsor, in unparalleled luxury. Sure, she misses her father. But Mr. Locke’s wealth and connections have provided her an education unavailable to most mixed-race children. Then one day January stumbles through an impossible door into a world that shouldn’t exist, and wonders: what other worlds exist behind this one?

It’s possible to find the political metaphors in Alix E. Harrow’s first novel. The teenager’s discovery that her privileged childhood doesn’t reflect how others live; the ways powerful people preserve their power by feeding on others; the influence race has on how Americans interact with one another. But I prefer another reading. Harrow has written an American fairy tale, channeling our better instincts and higher ideals. We become ourselves, Harrow suggests, by rediscovering childhood wonder.

Mr. Locke holds a poorly defined role within The Society, a group of gentleman archeologists who pay actual credentialed academics to crisscross the world looking for trinkets. The Society doesn’t publish scholarship or compile information, however; it supports itself with a thriving black market in antiquities, turning other worlds’ legacies into cheap cash. January, whom Mr. Locke is training as his junior accountant, gets fleeting glimpses of this corrupt world, never enough to understand it.

Meanwhile, January holds onto fleeting memories of her father’s extravagant tales of distant lands and mysterious peoples. She also half-recalls an incident when she was seven, in 1901, when she wrote words on paper, and those words opened a door into an exotic, spice-scented world. Did she really make something magical happen by simply writing it down? Mr. Locke discourages such speculations. He’s a rationalist, and insists that only this world matters enough to study.

January actually occupies a world riddled with Doors. Mr. Locke and his society have another, ruder word for Doors. But whatever name, these Doors open onto strange and mysterious worlds of wonder and possibility, many of them magical. When a puzzling book hidden inside an impossible chest reveals to January that the door of her childhood was very real, she sees new opportunities opening immediately. Mr. Locke, however, sees a threat which must be stopped.

Alix E. Harrow

Harrow’s writing straddles the line between fantasy thriller and social parable. The aptly named Mr. Locke has no patience with doors; he uses money and connections to preserve the Earth he loves, making our world smaller, safer, and more immune to change. January, a half-caste child whose father trades in mystery and exoticism, misses the thrill of wonder she experienced in childhood, the power of believing that, somewhere, magic still happens. The conflict is generational.

This metaphor doesn’t limit Harrow’s writing, however. Her first priority is creating engaging characters in difficult situations. In January’s first-person main narrative, she first challenges powerful institutions from inside; when this proves fruitless, she crosses the boundary to rediscover the outside world she was born in, but doesn’t remember. Meanwhile, between the covers of her puzzling book, she discovers Yule Ian Scholar, whose puzzling memoir might hold the key to January finding her way home.

Themes emerge quickly: what does going home mean? Does it mean returning to the comfortable untruths we learned in childhood? Or does it require passing through painful, harrowing (pun intended) uncertainty in search of truth? Like L. Frank Baum’s Dorothy, or Thomas Wolfe’s George Webber, January’s life is plagued by homesickness; but she has only a vague, half-formed notion of home. She only knows that truth exists, and it doesn’t necessarily correspond with mere reality.

Harrow also emphasizes the ways human words create other realities. The Society uses arcane rituals, influenced by Scottish Rite Masonic traditions, to create a nexus of power which the rest of reality can’t see. (Late in the book, Harrow’s distrust of the Scottish Enlightenment becomes glaring.) Meanwhile, January uses words to reveal hidden truths and actually increase uncertainty. The Society sees uncertainty as chaos, but January sees uncertainty as opportunity. Which set of words prevails?

This novel presents a world seeking resolution. Is trust always better than paranoia, is certitude always better than doubt? Harrow, by day a scholar of American race history, has definite opinions on these questions, though she doesn’t lay them out prescriptively. Instead, she walks readers, youth and adult alike, through the turmoil of finding our own resolution. By the end, maybe we don’t have all the answers. But, like January, we now have better questions.