Scott Alexander Howard - The Other Valley

Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town--except 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 see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.

Comment: I was browsing a site sometimes I check for book recommendations and this title caught my eye. Just reading the blurb made it seem quite intriguing and I thankfully had the chance to get it, thus why I'm reading it so soon after adding it.

In this story we meet Odile, a 16 year old girl who lives in a Valley. The community is small and particular: they all knowingly accept they live in a valley with rules and limitations and that to the west of their valley there is another, in which reality is set 20 years ago, and that to the east there is another valley which takes place 20 years in the future. This situation is ongoing, never ceases and probably is divided into infinite realities.

Odile finds herself trying to find an apprenticeship position, as all 16 year olds must do, and she is trying for the Conseil, the body of people who determine who can be accepted to travel to one of the other valleys, and only for a very compelling reason. Things aren't easy but Odile will try, especially since her mother strongly wants her to have the position. Everything changes one day, when Odile can't help noticing a couple she knows and who must come from another valley, which means something will happen to their son, a friend of hers. She knows she cannot interfere, but... will she be able to let events go as they should?

My first impression while reading is that this was a very compelling take on "what if". Who doesn't think about the past or what the future will entail, and if this or that is wrong or right... Who doesn't wish to go back and redo something or not do something, or anything at all in regards to one's course of life? I tell myself that those who say "I have no regrets" are surely lying somehow, if only to themselves, because there is always something, even if inconsequential. But would it be inconsequential?

Science apart, it seems to be common knowledge that going back or going to the future would be imcompatible to several laws of nature, and changing something would have dire consequences. Still, there are countless science fiction and fantasy stories out there with time travel and some even offer interesting ways for it to be possible to happen. I tend to not think too hard on those things, unless they are glaringly bad, but in this case, I did like the premise of a continuum that allows realities to co exist. I don't have the knowledge to go into space-time theories, but the explanations used in this novel make a certain sense, to the context in which things are presented.

The obvious flaw is that all these realities must advance at the same pace and if so many valleys might exist, then this balance is not really that possible if one single things could be changed... anyway, the focus is on Odile, and at first this annoyed me a little, for I thought it was more a YA distopia in disguise. It's true the author focuses the plot around her and her friends, and their small sphere of connections, but not with romance of other teenager worries stealing the attention. Odile's friendship with Edme starts to become more serious after she sees his parents, in an obvious travel from the future, and what it might mean. The story is heavily centered on what should be the correct thing to do, while Odile "learns" through her attempt to join the Conseil, on why there are rules.

The rules seem simple, if people could come and go at ease, reality could not exist. The premise is that a single change could erase that person and a new, different reality would exist instead. Therefore, there are also police officers, let's say, who control the borders of each valley and the Conseil (like a government) would decree who can or cannot travel. Everyone adheres to this knowledge but, of course, it seemed as if we were being taught this so that it would have a reason to be used later on.

The story is divided into two parts. The first is when Odile is 16 - we only have her POV - and the second one is set 20 years later, when she is at a new stage of her life and dealing with the effects of her choices. The option for this narrative sequence is obvious and the author adds plenty of situations in which we can think about the process of living and why Odile might be doing this or that. 

We deal with things and we accept them or not because we know we cannot go back. But Odile could, if she managed to find a way to outmaneuver all the rules in place. If she does or not I will not say, but I can say this story was good for thinking on both sides - should one go back and change something or not/should one interefere with the future after knowing what will happen -, it was a lot more thrilling than what I'd imagine and had an end I liked.

One last word, though. Some readers have commented on the lack of quotation marks and how it was hard to understand sometimes when people were talking or if it was a dialogue or inner musings. It could be a little annoying at times, yes, but did not ruin my overall experience, even with the elements I think couldbe improved.

Grade: 8/10