Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors, or the Frustration and Pleasure of Defied Expectations
Hello Readers.
It’s been a while since I’ve started one of my pieces here so conversationally, but I thought we might discuss Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors from a meta perspective, casually, first, before diving in more formally. As someone who gets a fair bit of information about upcoming books from publicists, the pitches and synopsis of a book come a strong second to the cover. Give me a good pitch and I will ask for a review copy in very short order.
But what happens for a reader when that pitch does not match what one has read? What if the book is about something rather different? And so we come to Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors.
So let’s look at the pitch in question.
Meet Cassie Andrews, a passionate bibliophile working at a Manhattan bookstore, where she revels in sharing her love for reading with others. Following the passing of her favorite customer, Mr. Webber, Cassie is astonished to receive a peculiar gift from him — an ancient journal with the enigmatic inscription, “This is the Book of Doors. Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door.” Little does she know, this unassuming artifact holds extraordinary powers, enabling her to traverse time and space by merely envisioning a destination. As Cassie embarks on her awe-inspiring journeys to cherished places, she becomes aware of a shadowy figure trailing her every move — Drummond Fox, the heir to the secretive Fox Library, home to rare and enchanted volumes…
To me as a reader, when I read this, I was imagining The Book of Doors might be something like Iain Banks’ Transitions, or maybe Narnia, or others. Doors that can open up into other places is a trope that has seen resurgence with the works of people like Alix Harrow and her The Ten Thousand Doors of January, but the tradition is one that many authors have used throughout the history of science fiction. At least to C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll, if not even further back.
But if we induce the dimension of time, then consider walking out of the doors of the Tardis as a Door to another place and time. The Tardis is like a manifest version of the Book of Doors. Instead of using a book to turn a door into a portal to elsewhere and elsewhen, it’s a magic box that does the same thing.
As it so happens, a bulk of the book is like Doctor Who, but not the typical episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor and his companions walk out of the Tardis doors and into an adventure somewhere or somewhen else¹ episode I thought it was going to be, and the themes engendered by it.
The book does start off with the heavy sense of wonder as seen in the pitch. Cassie Andrews is a passionate reader indeed. She went from reading books at a bookstore to working in a small bookstore (a rather poignant profession in this age when bookstores are struggling). The book starts off as a paean to books, reading, and how books can connect us to people in the person of Mr. Webber. And indeed, once Cassie receives the Book of Doors, she and her friend Izzy go off on a whirlwind of experimentation with the Book in a way that you or I, given such a book, would do. Cassie has been established as someone who has had a swath of life experiences, a suite of places that had seen and visited and could, now with the Door, go again. And she eagerly does, with a memorable scene at her delight at being able to see Venice again. And so she and Izzy explore the limitations and power of the Book. There is some very funny humor as they explore what they think the Door can do, or so they think.
When they do meet Drummond Fox for the first time, there is a tonal shift to the book to a darker aspect, as indeed, we are introduced to a whole subculture and set of people who collect and look for the enchanted volumes like those in his library (the greatest such collection of same). It’s a fascinating look into a world, of an urban fantasy where individuals secretly travel the world seeking these books. Brown puts his focus mainly on the characters themselves, on a sliding scale from the kind Fox to the mysterious and unnamed woman who seeks all the books for herself. While there are some speculations and questions raised as to how and why the Books exist and where they come from, Brown isn’t interested in that. He’s much more interested in the character dynamics, and the character studies, as we get some very well done point of views from the other people in this world.
Their schemes and plots against each other in search of, and the use of the books they have are very well done. We get a wide variety of the kinds of books in this world and what they might do. Some of them are far less innocent than the Book of Doors at first appears to be, with Books that have little, or no, positive uses with their singular dread power. The Books are honed, individual weapons, rather than having a wide range of powers. Thus, we see collectors, besides Fox, trying to get more than one. And this is why Fox’s library is so sought² by the members of this world.
As for Fox, Brown keeps a little enigmatic at first, although he ultimately gets the most backstory of the collectors. Given his role with his library and his important role in how the modern book collecting community formed, he is a central character who Brown uses carefully. Other collectors come off to various degrees, although I was most disappointed in the character of the auctioneer. Someone who bargains and auctions these books and is established as having done so many times before, comes off as frightfully underprepared for conflict and trouble. In the very dangerous world of the collection of books, and the sharp characters within, she seemed woefully undergunned.
We do get a short point of view early on from the aforementioned mysterious woman, who Brown keeps as a deliberate enigma, whose ultimate provenance doesn’t come until the finale. Until that finale, she is even more frustrating for me than the auctioneer, feeling more like a tool rather than a person. While the denouement and the ultimate nature of the book help make her make sense (and just why Brown keeps her an enigma), for the majority of the book, she is not so much a character as a force of opposition, a dread adversary.
But this urban fantasy mode of book collectors isn’t quite the shift I was talking about. Doors and Portals are a common enough trope in Urban Fantasy. The portal to fairyland, the door that leads down to the Undercity, or wilder realms. No, I was ready for that and didn’t think that was a big shift. It turns out, Fox reveals, that the Book of Doors can provide a gateway not just to places, but also time. The book can open up a door to, say, a specific doorway in Istanbul (and yes you must be able to visualize it, you can’t go to a door you can’t see in your mind), but you could go to that Door and emerge out in 1980, or if the Door is old enough, 1580. You might already see what is coming, as I did in this point in the narrative, and the book shifts, as Cassie winds up in the past, taking “The Slow Path” back to the present after a couple of decades. Yes, the Doctor Who episode in question is “Blink”. But here, instead of Weeping Angels, we have entirely human antagonists.
This itself sets up what Brown’s The Book of Doors really seems to be wanting to do. Here is where the pitch and the book start to diverge, and quite sharply. This is a book not quite about the power of books and doors and going places by opening one, but instead, it is a twisting and intricately devised narrative of stable time travel loops. Brown has a lot of fun in the novel as the clockwork mechanisms of explaining things play out by means of the time travel events in the novel. And this seems to be the story he really wanted to tell from the beginning—a story about time travel loops, about intricate plotting to show how the journeys into the past, both the slow paths and shorter excursions by a number of characters.
Overall it does really feel like modern Doctor Who, in a good way, at points as agendas collide and carefully planned time travel loops and plans in the finale³.
And so I go back to the original point of this piece. I would have certainly read and devoured this book had it been sold to me this way, but I would have found even more favor with it had I known that this is what the story Brown wanted to tell really was. In the end, the whole concept of the Book of Doors, as wondrous and magical as it is, quickly takes a backseat to the intricacy of the time travel loops and plotting. I wonder if readers other than myself will find much less favor with this because of the completely changed premise of the book. And, just as important, I wonder if readers looking for a twist maze of time travel plots will miss this interesting one, entirely.
How do you feel, reader, about the yanking of expectations, of a book’s premise turning out to be completely different than advertised? What examples of how this worked for you, and how it didn’t, might you share in the comments?
¹Allow my personal gripe there that Doctor Who is somewhat missing a grand opportunity to do more straight up Historical episodes. We’ve gotten some, lately. The “Demons of the Punjab” is an excellent example, Doctor Who could do more!
²The RPG Bookhounds of London, where collectors of books in the 1930s scheme to collect dread texts could definitely be the chassis for a game set in the present, as book collectors scheme to collect the books in Brown’s world.
³To go with another RPG reference, see games like Continuum and Timewatch, where setting up traps in time and space and having the right tool there because you left it there ten years ago for the purpose are part of the joy of playing. People who like these games will love Brown’s book, and vice versa.
