There is a Door in This Darkness, by Kristin Cashore

I was immediately interested in Kristin Cashore's new novel, because she's a wonderful writer,  and I loved her fantasy novels Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue. (I have not yet read the last two in the series, because Bitterblue was a little heavy, and I've been looking for lighter novels for a few years now. Since 2020, in fact.) 

The title of this one gave me pause, and the premise even more so. Was I ready to read a book set during the pandemic? It turns out the answer was yes, if the book was this one.

The blurb for this book is accurate but doesn't in any way do it justice. It's much more than "magic-tinged," and it's a lot more wise, hopeful and whimsical than it sounds. Wilhelmina is such a real, relatable character, and so are all the members of her family and her friends, and their relationships—all the relationships—make this book glow. I use the word deliberately, because light is a theme and a motif running through the book—if there's a door in the darkness, light is what's coming in.

I'm not sure magical realism is quite the right way to categorize this book. In my own less-than-rigorous definition, magical realism doesn't have any explanation for the fantastical elements. In this book, the fantastical is random and quirky, involving birds and doughnuts and obelisks, [ever-so-slightly spoilery] but there is also mention of tarot, and grandparents who are "practitioners of the craft." I wouldn't say this book is about witches or Wicca or any particular mythology or spiritual tradition—more that it recognizes "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio," and the fantastical elements are representative metaphors. (Which kind of aligns with magical realism; I think I'll stop trying to define anything!)

However you define it, the magic was fun: it worked as a beautiful metaphor but also to drive the plot in almost a treasure-hunt-y way. 

This is another book with three aunts (see A Sorceress Comes to Call), and I have to say I won't soon tire of this trope! Wilhelmina's aunts were just lovely. The narration alternates between present day (Oct 2020) and childhood summers spent at the aunts' big house in the country, and it really does feel like "her life was a string of lights, one for every summer she'd spent with them." Then there are the friends, Julie and Bee, and what an exquisite and realistic portrayal of friendship! The dips into the past allow us to watch the friendship form and develop and to fall in love with all three children as they grow up. We even get a romance, which I won't spoil! All the kinds of love (there are siblings and parents too) and all the ways love is hard, and rewarding, and all the ways the pandemic made love both harder and more rewarding.

If you think you might be ready to read a book set during the pandemic, at the time of the 2020 election, then this might be a good book to start with. It acknowledges the stress, fear, frustration, loss and utter weirdness of that time, specifically of being a teenager at that time, and it offers a way to process. It's not a particularly subtle book, but I think the theme of finding light in the darkness, of balancing realism with hope, is one we need to be hit over the head with!