The Light Between Worlds
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The Light Between Worlds
I stand on the edge of this for a moment, on the fringe of their happy family chatter. It makes me glad, but there’s a little ache inside me all the same. I was like this once, carefree and comfortable in my own skin, knowing exactly where I belonged.
But then my eyes light on the windowsill next to the wood-fired range. In among the oddments there, the blue glass bottles and cuttings taking root, there are two picture frames, draped with a black cloth and with fresh flowers carefully set between them. In each is a photograph of a boy in uniform, one big and straight-shouldered like Tom, the other smaller and self-possessed like his father and Annie.
The Harpers aren’t carefree. They’ve known trouble. And they can’t be as comfortable as they seem, not with the thistle of grief lodged in each of their hearts, chafing when any one of them moves the wrong way. But somehow, in spite of all this, they laugh. They love. They carry on.
I sit down on one of the benches drawn up to the long harvest table and watch, hungry to learn the trick of happiness.
The Light Between Worlds is a beautiful and melancholy novel about the aftermath of a magical experience. It explores the way three siblings cope with their return to England after spending years in the Narnia-like kingdom of the Woodlands.
The first half of the novel is told from Evelyn’s point of view. Youngest of the siblings, she was most at home in the Woodlands and feels lost and empty in England. Chapters alternate between Evelyn at boarding school, trying her best to fit in and reassure her family and friends that she’s okay, and Evelyn’s memories of her time in the Woodlands when she and her brother and sister were called to aid the Woodlanders in their fight against a tyrannical invader. School is particularly difficult this year because her sister Philippa has gone to university in America, and Evelyn doesn’t know how to hold herself together without her. Evelyn falls in love with a boy in England, but ultimately her love for him and her siblings is not enough to reconcile her to the loss of the Woodlands. Her part of the novel ends with her attempt to return to the magical kingdom.
The second half of the novel is told from Philippa’s point of view after Evelyn has disappeared. Philippa returns to England from school in America to search for her. Flashback chapters depict what happened after the siblings were sent back from the Woodlands to England, showing how Evelyn gradually fell apart and Philippa exhausted herself trying to help her. Eventually the sisters’ relationship fractured and Philippa abandoned/was driven away by Evelyn. While trying to uncover what happened to Evelyn while she was gone, Philippa gets a job at the National Gallery. She meets an art restorer who was badly maimed in World War II, and their developing relationship gives Philippa strength to face her own failure to save Evelyn. At the end, Philippa is able to cross back into the Woodlands, and she finds Evelyn there, safe and happy. The sisters reconcile, but Philippa has too much invested in England to stay, so they part forever.
The Light Between Worlds is an homage and a response to the “Chronicles of Narnia” and other portal fantasies. A great many deep themes are packed into the tightly woven narrative. It uses the journey to another world and back to explore ideas of belonging, identity and loyalty, entwined with the nature of family and sibling relationships. Evelyn’s struggle to be happy in England is a representation of mental illness and the toll it takes on families: she exhibits symptoms of depression, PTSD and self-harm, and Philippa bears the burden of supporting her.
The setting in post-World War II England allows Weymouth to look at the alternate reality that is war and how individuals and societies attempt to return to normalcy when it’s over, and how difficult it is for those who experienced it to communicate with those who didn’t.
Evelyn loves poetry and quotes from a number of different poems in her attempts to communicate and connect herself to her world. In Philippa’s half of the novel, works of art in the National Gallery are described as they impact Philippa’s emotions and understanding. The allusions add to the atmosphere while further developing the themes and demonstrating the role of art and literature in healing. An appendix lists all the poems and works of art referred to.
The Light Between Worlds is a novel for a mature reader, not because of anything graphic or inappropriate, but because of its thoughtful, layered approach to its material. Younger readers will be disappointed that the Woodlands story skips all the exciting action and focuses on the characters’ feelings and moral choices; they will be frustrated that Evelyn’s love doesn’t conquer all and bewildered by the lack of a clear happy ending for any of the characters. Older readers will appreciate the lyrical prose and the heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful exploration of what it means to love and what it takes to belong.
The Light Between Worlds would make an excellent novel to study in an advanced literature class: it could easily be compared with Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway and Jo Walton’s Among Others; it would work well in a unit on poetry or war literature; a creative writing class could study its structure and its use of allusion.
Adults young and old who love the “Chronicles of Narnia” are the ideal audience for The Light Between the Worlds. This is a lovely novel in its own right, but it’s also a rich, heartfelt engagement with C.S. Lewis’s legacy and a thought-provoking play on the potentialities of portal fantasy.
Kim Aippersbach is a writer, editor and mother of three living in Vancouver, British Columbia.