The duality of the phrase was like the duality of the doors: they changed lives, and they destroyed them, all with the same, simple invitation. Come through, and see.
PAGES: 117 (Ebook)
SYNOPSIS: A story about what happens to children who traveled to another world or dimension after they got back to the real world.
RATING: 4.5/5
NON-SPOILERY REVIEW:
It's very hard to write a review for this book. I have already finished it 2x but I still can't put in my mind how to accurately describe all of my feelings for it.
The cover is very beautiful yet it seems pretty scary. It's accurate to the atmosphere of the writing. Seanan McGuire's writing is very beautiful which makes the book more exciting to read. It's very short and a very fast read.
I love how diverse the characters are. There is a transgender character and an asexual character. They all had interesting backgrounds and experiences about the places they went to. There are so many beautiful lines in this book. There are many twists and turns that happened in the book. There were happy and heartbreaking times.
Eleanor West is an amazing woman for creating a place where the children can share their experience and try to live on with their lives. The concept of this book is very unique and amazing to read about. I want to know more about the different worlds that was mentioned in this book There were so many and each one had their own characteristics that made the children love them. The experiences of the children were precious. It felt devastating to know that their parents do not believe them and even go as far as thinking there is something wrong with them. Though, I can't stop thinking about the parents whose children never returned. What happened to them?
FAVORITE QUOTES:
It would have been too hard on the prospective students to sit there and listen as the people they loved most in all the world—all this world, at least—dismissed their memories as delusions, their experiences as fantasy, their lives as some intractable illness.
At least while they were with her, they would be with someone who understood. Even if they would never have the opportunity to go back home, they would have someone who understood, and the company of their peers, which was a treasure beyond reckoning.
Eleanor West spent her days giving them what she had never had, and hoped that someday, it would be enough to pay her passage back to the place where she belonged.
Narrate the impossible things, turn them into a story, and they could be controlled.
This isn't a place for lies or pretending everything is all right. We know everything is not all right. If it were, you wouldn't be here.
"Hope hurts. That's what you need to learn, and fast, if you don't want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying 'don't use this word' and 'don't use that word,' but she never bans the ones that are really bad. She never bans hope."
"Because they're the wrong colors, right? Somebody else's rainbow."
"Jack and Jill went up the hill, to watch a bit of slaughter, Jack fell down and broke her crown, and Jill came tumbling after."
For us, the places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.
"You want to go back, and so you hold on to the habits you learned while you were traveling, because it's better than admitting the journey's over. We don't teach you how to dwell. We also don't teach you how to forget. We teach you how to move on."
It was all about science, but the science was magical. It didn't care about whether something could be done. It was about whether it should be done, and the answer was always, always yes."
Their love wanted to fix her, and refused to see that she wasn't broken.
"Sometimes the desire goes away. Sometimes the door comes back. Sometimes we just have to learn to deal with being exiles in our home countries."
"Our doors are hidden, but by looking closely enough, we can find them."
Finding a place where she could be free. That's your story, too, every one of you.
"This is not an asylum, and you are not mad—and so what if you were? This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm. If anyone should be kind, understanding, accepting, loving to their fellow outcasts, it's you. All of you. You are the guardians of the secrets of the universe, beloved of worlds that most will never dream of, much less see … can't you see where you owe it to yourselves to be kind? To care for one another? No one outside this room will ever understand what you've been through the way the people around you right now understand. This is not your home. I know that better than most. But this is your way station and your sanctuary, and you will treat those around you with respect."
"That was the Moors." Jack shook her head. "It was cruel and cold and brutal and beautiful, and I would give anything to go back there. Maybe it broke me in some deep, intrinsic way that I am incapable of seeing, just like Jill can't understand that she's not a normal girl anymore. I don't care. It was my home, and it finally let me be myself, and I hate it here."
Then Angela turned on Kade, and said, "I meant what I said. It's sick, how you pretend like you're something you're not."
"I was about to say the same thing to you," said Christopher. "I mean, you always did a pretty good job of pretending to be a decent human being. You had me fooled."
"Why is your happy-ever-after the only one that matters?"
You're nobody's rainbow.
You're nobody's princess.
You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.
Like a key that finds its keyhole, Nancy was finally home.
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