Portal to E'ewere

by Irma Walker

In a crowded uncompromising future world, a girl seeks a visionary place of space and beauty, and just when she seems to succeed, she is confronted with a terrible choice.

220 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Kaylee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The description on Goodreads doesn't tell you much, so here is the text from the dust jacket:
In the middle of the twenty-first century, all of Earth had been in a state of near anarchy; in an attempt to create some order in the area that had been the United States, many small nations evolved. The strongest of these, the tiny N'Eastern States of America, was ruled by a council of nine men, and by a rigid system of behavior mores called the Courtesy Code. Originally these were temporary measures, but two hundred years later they were unalterable law.

People live in swarms, there are so many of them. And most people die of fright at the idea of ever being alone. But AMitY is different. She has strange dreams of a world where space and aloneness are possible.

She might have achieved this is her own society, because she has attracted the attention of the son of one of the current Council of Nine. He has offered marriage. And that would mean life in a house with amenities AMitY can only dream about in her swarm menage. Yet she has refused ConCord Grisom because his father was responsible for the death of her parents.

ConCord, however, sees in AMitY the discontent and imagination that make her the kind of person who could help him change their world, so he makes it possible for her - without realizing it - to find the portal into the world of which she dreams. And only there in the paradise she sought, can she begin to see life on Earth in the proper perspective and ConCord as an individual apart from his father. And only then, after some dreadful mistakes, can she assess her own aims and her real desires.

Notes: This novel starts with a "Foreword" which is actually a prologue. I highly recommend reading this before starting the novel. It is short and tells you what you need to know about the setting to understand this new world.

There are beautiful illustrations at the beginning of chapters. I noticed that chapters starting with A have illustrations of acorns around the initial capital letter. The ones starting with I have ivy, D has dandelions... They are lovely, and well-suited to the theme of the book, being set in an overpopulated world where nature had been left behind, but there are some who want to leave the crowded cities and establish smaller communities outside the city walls, out where there are open spaces and fertile land.

I liked that AMitY has to grapple with some ethical quandaries, and come to a decision to do what's best for everyone, not just take the selfish way out. I also liked that when she encounters a very different society, she learns to see things objectively - yes, the restrictions of her society can be stifling, but that same society also contains things that are good and to be admired; the other society affords an easier life, yet their lives are just as custom-bound and restrictive as hers, only in different ways. She started out with a lot of skewed perceptions, because she let prejudice guide her beliefs, but eventually she faces her prejudice and learns to make rational judgements.

And ConCord, I admire him so much! His perseverance, both in his commitment to his people, as well as in refusing to give up on AMitY even when she's being an idiot, his willingness to see past her mistakes and his determination to solve whatever problems they may have. I like characters who are committed to solving problems rather than running away from them, and even among those, ConCord stands out to me like a beacon.

I couldn't find a copy anywhere else, but openlibrary has it! Read for free here: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL31608...

[Madison]

This was a very good distopian book, I wish she would write sequels to her stories. Irma has a great way of describing people and object, it make it easy to picture and the book seems more vibrant. I like how she can write a distopia and not over power it with a juvenile relationship like other authors do. This book not only amuses you, but it shows the difference between right and wrong ways of how we're living now.

[SBC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amity lives in a future world shaped by the Litanies and rules that are necessary to cope with overpopulation. Language has degraded and there are lots of apostrophes in the dialogue to equate for dropped letters. This made the story more difficult to read than it needed to be and I wonder if this is the reason this book isn't better known and more widely read. It's hard to recommend the title of a book that you can't easily say. (E'ewere is supposed to be short for 'Elsewhere')

The world-building is really interesting. Amity has reached the age where she is about to receive her life assignment, and the events around this allow us to explore her restricted world - how everyone lives in menages, but cannot be friends with a fellow member; how education and reproduction is limited to those who are deemed worthy by genetics and dedication to the rules; how looking, talking and touching may give Offense; how older people are forced to retire to make way for the younger. There is a romance subplot with a forward-thinking member of the privileged class, who frankly puts up with a lot of guff for a character who frequently makes foolish decisions.

Perhaps another reason this story isn't widely read is because of the introduction of the portal to E'ewere halfway through. Although scientific explanations are offered, it felt like a cross-genre movement into fantasy, particularly because the people that Amity encounters in E'ewere are small, winged, and have no technology. But the story that develops is interesting and (although no surprise) worth a read.

[Jamie]

One of the few books that I read as teenager that I vividly remember. It was a strange sci-fi novel about a post-nuclear war earth.