Its so odd, because when I finished this book I wasn't at all sure I liked it. So much of the plot takes place "offstage." It either happened before the book started, or its going on behind the protagonists back or is being reported to her after its finished and decided, and on and so it goes. She reads, she thinks about things, she wonders if that person over there would talk to her, and meanwhile the fairies, her mother, the aunts, her father, the teachers are all making choices that directly affect her and not only does she have very little influence over those choices, half the time she doesn't even find out about them until they're water under the bridge.So I finished it a little bemused and frustrated, it seems like such an at arms length way to tell a story. But it stuck with me. Even now two months later, turns of phrase or bits of description pop into my head and I think, "where is that from?," and I realize, its Among Others again. Also, having some more distance on it, I now realize that in fact, that is what it was like for me, being an adolescent. People made decisions without you even being in the room, and then your life was shaped by those decisions, whether or not you understood them, or even knew about them.
Its a frustrating book, but a true one, and its still bouncing around in my head rearranging the furniture two months later, so I kind of have to take it seriously.
