There Is a Door in This Darkness is a novel by Kristin Cashore.
Finished on: 22.7.2024

Plot:
Wilhelmina is part of the High School Class of 2020. Which means that her graduation fell under COVID and she has now deferred all of her plans for another year to help out with her two much younger siblings at home. Plus, two of her aunts have come to live with her and her family. Even apart from COVID, Wilhelmina is still reeling from her third aunt’s death shortly after the 2016 election. And the results of that election. Isolated from her two best friends, who are in a COVID bubble together, space at home overcrowded, and the next presidential election in just a few days, Wilhelmina starts to receive strangely prophetic messages. And she is not the only one.

There Is a Door in This Darkness is a soft, hopeful book about grief and finding the magic in life despite everything – but in a political way. It is a wonderful book that wants to be treasured.

The pandemic has shaped a lot of the recent years, and especially for young people, it must have been extremely formative. That things now have seemingly gone back to what they were before, must be a little disorienting. I know it often feels weird to me. But especially when you look at the media around us, it’s almost as if the pandemic never happened. Very rarely are there books or movies that reflect the time. At times you stumble upon a TV show made during the time and you will see masks, but other than that, it is as if we’ve collectively decided that the pandemic was an unusual blip and we don’t need to mention it again.

Then there is There Is a Door in This Darkness, set not only “in the pandemic” (which arguably isn’t over), but at a very specific point of that pandemic and gives us an accurate reminder of the rules in place back then. Queuing 2m apart, even outside. Wearing masks everywhere. No physical contact. Homeschooling. No waiting at the doctor’s office, but outside of it. And so on, and so forth. It throws you right back into 2020 (that is true even for somebody who doesn’t live in the USA and never has, like me).

And it doesn’t shy away from the pain and confusion and just outright fear that the pandemic caused, compounded by the political situation, with Wilhelmina rightly afraid that fascist Trump would get a second term (how apt that the book comes out before another election where you have to fear this election result yet again). Wilhelmina, who is disabled/chronically ill; who has a Black best friend; whose aunts were a gay throuple, now just a couple anymore; whose other best friend might be non-binary, certainly doesn’t adhere to traditional masculinity; and how falls in love with an Asian boy – she definitely has a lot to lose with another term of Trump. As do many other people.

Cashore’s book have always been political and have always had diverse representation. But they have been much more fantastical until now, making the politics feel more removed. That is definitely not the case here and I loved her and the book for it.

There is a bit of magic here, though it is more magical realism than outright fantasy. This magic helps Wilhelmina find a way out of her grief and her fear into something more hopeful, more alive. But it’s not the magic that is the hope, fortunately, just one way of getting there. By the end of the book, there is no pretense that everything is fine now (that would be cynical to say the least), but that a happy life is still worth fighting for. Human connections are still worth fighting for. It is the perfect note to end a wonderful book on.

Summarizing: absolutely loved it.