The Other Valley, Scott Alexander Howard
The Other Valley, Scott Alexander Howard
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

The Other Valley

Author: Scott Alexander Howard

Narrator: Cindy Kay

Unabridged: 10 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/27/2024


Synopsis

*Soon to be a TV series*
Jimmy Fallon’s Book Club Top Four Pick and a PBS Book Club Pick

For fans of Kazuo Ishiguro and Emily St. John Mandel, this “mind-bending take on time travel” (The New York Times) is about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future, and a young girl who spots two elderly visitors from across the border: the grieving parents of the boy she loves.

Sixteen-year-old Odile vies for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. 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 know Odile—is going to die. Sworn to secrecy to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate. Yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, jeopardizing her entire future.

The Other Valley is “thought-provoking exploration of ethics, power, love, and time travel” (Kirkus Reviews).

About Scott Alexander Howard

Scott Alexander Howard lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his work focused on the relationship between memory, emotion, and literature. The Other Valley is his first novel. Connect with him at ScottAlexanderHoward.com.


Reviews

This is a quiet gem of a novel. Scott Alexander Howard takes a unique premise and executes it beautifully – never relying too heavily on his fantastical plot device to convey young Odile’s heartfelt story. I loved the exploration of the moral and practical reasons a citizen should and should not be......more

Goodreads review by Blair

The premise of The Other Valley is high-concept, yet so simple it seems amazing no-one’s written this book before now. There’s a community in a valley. Some distance either side lie duplicate valleys – exactly the same, except one is twenty years in the past, the other twenty years into the future.......more

Goodreads review by Debra

What an interesting concept. I must give the author props for originality. Imagine a town in a valley. On the other side is the same town in the same valley but they are separated by twenty years. One town twenty years in the past, the other twenty years in the future. Got it? Sixteen-year-old Odile......more


Quotes

"Kay's voice is unhurried and comforting as Odile confronts her many conflicts, internal and external. This novel is unique, suspenseful, literary, and complex."