How hard it is to live in this world while knowing that somewhere out there is a doorway that leads to where you're supposed to be. Many of these kids just want to get back to their home, their real home, the place where they truly feel like they belong. I love how the book manages to be comical and serious, dark and light, fairy tale and psychological thriller, all at the same time. And there's a rather hilarious moment when Nancy's roommate asks if she minds that she masturbates. There are many, often subtle, nods toward gender issues.

Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. “They’re too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. “Because ‘boys will be boys’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Lundy. For example, Lundy's response to Nancy's question about why there are more girls than boys:

It's such a strange little book and I genuinely enjoyed both the writing and the insights into human behaviour. There's also a whole lot of creepy murder going on. I loved the eerie style of writing, and the diverse cast of characters that included an asexual protagonist and a boy who is transgender. Very atmospheric and strange, but also full of wit and humour, this story is just damn near perfect. She offers them a place where they can be believed. Because Eleanor has been to her own world and she knows the sadness and loss these children experience when they are dragged back to the 'real' world. Eleanor West promises to help them, and she does, just not in the way the parents imagine. The ones who claim to have been to a different world. No one, that is, except Eleanor West.Įleanor West's Home for Wayward Children is where despairing parents send their troubled kids. It's a kind of dark, creepy fairy tale about all those children who slipped through the cracks - a wardrobe, a rabbit hole, or a simple doorway - and found themselves somewhere else somewhere no one would believe they'd been. I have to try and explain Every Heart a Doorway somehow, but it isn't easy. ‘Be Sure.’ Sure of what? We were twelve, we weren’t sure of anything. “We went down, and at the bottom there was a door, and on the door there was a sign.

Every heart a doorway by seanan mcguire