Colleen Mondor Reviews Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom 978-1-250-84850-5, $22.99, 160pp, hc) January 2024. Cover by Robert Hunt.

Seanan McGuire’s latest entry in her Wayward Children series includes several old favorites who come together and relearn the meaning of the word ‘‘home.’’ Mislaid in Parts Half-Known opens in Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Chil­dren and includes a foray through some doors that lead into the fairyland of Prism, a visit with an old friend among some dinosaurs, a confrontation in the Shop Where the Lost Things Go and discus­sions about Confection and the Trench and that glittery place that will make you feel sorry for the mean girl. The events of the last book, Lost in the Moment and Found, loom large here as its pro­tagonist, Antoinette Riccie, aka ‘‘Antsy’’, is again front and center. But here’s the thing about the Wayward Children series – even though it helps to read the books in order, McGuire makes sure you know more than enough about everyone and everything to enjoy each title on its own, so all the things I have written here might sound daunting but are adequately explained as the plot unfolds. Suffice to say, Antsy must make something right, and find the place where she belongs. In the pro­cess of her doing that, several of her classmates help out and all of them come that much closer to finding their places as well.

It is very hard to discuss the plot for these novel­las without giving too much away, so I will say only that yet again, McGuire manages to take readers to exotic places among exceedingly unusual people and yet all of it reads as achingly familiar. And here’s where I am going to do something that reviewers are not supposed to do; I’m going to make this review all about myself.

I try very hard to separate myself from the books I review, thinking of the many readers out there and how a book will work (or not) for them. (The only time this doesn’t work is with dead dogs. I cannot personally handle reading a book with a dead dog. My mother and I both blame an acci­dental watching of Old Yeller for this.)

In the early pages of Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, McGuire discusses what it means to be ‘‘lost’’ versus ‘‘Lost.’’ Almost always, she writes, children pass through a door and find the per­fect place, the best place for them. But some, for whatever reason, don’t fit in the new place and find themselves exiled back to the world they came from, but because of the journey they do not fit there either. These are the ‘‘Lost’’ and they could wander forever, ‘‘in that instant between reaching out and reaching a destination.’’ When I read that, like a flash, I thought of my father and understood him on an entirely new level.

My father was a first generation American, born in what was then, the most French city in America. His native language was that of the Quebecois and he spoke it fluently throughout his childhood, learning English in school but not fully embrac­ing it until he left home. He dreamed, as they say of Jack Kerouac, in French Canadian. One week after he turned 17 and graduated high school, my father enlisted in the US Air Force and left home forever. The military was his ‘‘door’’ and it took him far away. He wanted to go, he was eager, if not desperate, to go. He spent six years in the military then began a career in civil service that culminated in a position in Florida where I grew up. And although the job was fine and he loved the beach, and he rarely returned to Rhode Island, he never fit. He was not home.

In the midst of our typical childhoods, my brother and I grew up with little knowledge of Florida’s sports teams but deeply familiar with the Montreal Canadiens. We ate the foods of his childhood and sang ‘‘Alouette’’ and ‘‘Frère Jacques’’. Our father subscribed his whole life to his home­town newspaper, (arriving in the mail back in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s) and chased his language as it faded from disuse, something that troubled him deeply. (‘‘The Doors give us language when they give us passage,’’ writes McGuire, ‘‘and take it back when we pass through again.’’) He was fully present in Florida, and most assuredly did not wish to return to New England, but he longed for somewhere else. In his heart, in how he lived, my father yearned for a place that was never his. It was not about visiting Quebec, (which he did more than once) but being part of Quebec; he was born in America but could not shake off the im­migrant experience of his own father. My father, I know now, was Lost.

In Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, a somewhat motley group of teenagers first must run and then, from one door to the next, find themselves unex­pectedly on a quest. They embrace the challenge that is thrust upon them and, in pursuing a resolu­tion, discover answers to who they are and who they intend to be. Some of them even find their way home. It is an outstanding fantasy, an excellent entry in the series and filled with characters who charm, endear, and inspire. They battle through all distractions (including dinosaurs!) and hold firm to their friendships as McGuire shows just how difficult the journey to find your place in the world (any world) can be. I wish my father was still alive; I would have loved to send him a copy so we could talk all about it. But Seanan McGuire has given me insight into his life nonetheless, and an unexpected way to consider the long reaching complications of his immigrant experience.

This review and more like it in the December and January 2023 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.