By Oluseyi Akinyode
This article was originally published in Washington Independent Review of Books here.
In The Other Valley, debut novelist Scott Alexander Howard contemplates the lives of a town’s residents against a landscape that physically unfolds across time. The story follows protagonist Odile and her friends as they make their way in the world and raises questions about whether the steps we take must be informed by past decisions, or if it’s possible to carve a new path to a more fulfilling life. A resident of Vancouver, British Columbia, Howard holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his work focused on the relationship among memory, emotion, and literature.
The Other Valley addresses some heavy philosophical themes. How did you give them the attention they deserved without making the book feel dense?
Your question makes me think of something Timothy Williamson, a British philosopher, once said. He was talking about how to achieve depth in writing, and he pointed out that if you try to be deliberately deep, you will produce writing that isn’t. It’s pretentious or “dense” instead. If you aim for truth, you get depth for free. My goal was to tell a story that felt true and let any deeper philosophical themes emerge naturally, if and where they wanted to. As a result, anything that feels philosophical in The Other Valley is tightly connected to Odile and her story. It’s there because it’s true to her situation and world, not because I consciously tried to address any particular theme. The best way to write a philosophical novel is to ignore philosophy as much as possible.
The main character, Odile, makes choices as a 16-year-old that significantly alter her future. What questions about free will and predestination were you hoping to explore in telling her story?
I don’t want to give away any choices Odile makes by how I answer this question, so I’ll say this: More than free will, I’m interested in the relationship between someone’s identity and their circumstances, and especially their luck. Luck can change our lives, but typically, when we imagine our lives changing, we assume that we’ll still be ourselves, just headed down a different path. In reality, the path molds and alters us. The person walking it is fundamentally different from the person who set out. Odile is a person whose life is heading in one direction, and then, in a single moment, she starts heading in another. I wanted to explore how that change affected who she became compared with who she might have been. In the novel’s world, the person she used to be is still alive on the other side of the mountains — which adds a layer of poignancy and eeriness.
Your vivid descriptions of the landscape are striking. Did you draw on any particular experiences or memories in bringing the novel’s setting to life?
Thank you! The description of the landscape and climate in The Other Valley was inspired by parts of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, where I spent most of my childhood. It’s a region with deep glacial lakes stretching north and south. You find lush orchards by the lakeshore, but as soon as you get up into the mountains, the landscape is extremely dry and arid — in fact, it’s home to Canada’s only desert. That juxtaposition of the pastoral and the barren seemed to fit the novel, which blends longing and foreboding. So, I went with the natural environment I knew intimately and invented a new town to put there.
You made the bold choice not to use quotation marks in the dialogue. What inspired that decision?
I did it for the same reason many writers do: In a first-person story, it holds the reader inside the narrator’s mind. It’s a stylistic way of conveying that everything you’re reading is steeped in the character’s voice. It’s an effect that suited this story. Honestly, I didn’t think I was making a bold decision. Dialogue without quotation marks is easy to follow when the writing is clear.
This is your debut novel. Can you share a bit about its road to publication?
It’s tough to count how many drafts of the manuscript I wrote. I rewrote this novel from scratch at least two-and-a-half times before overhauling and revising it for what felt like ages. I read it out loud to myself more times than I can count, and I read the whole thing backward while proofreading. By the time I was ready to query agents, it was in good shape. The published book only differs from the version I queried in subtle but meaningful ways. Like most debut authors, I found querying to be a grind. I had no personal or professional connections to the publishing world, so I was firing emails into slush piles and hoping for the best. After five months of near silence, I received requests for a complete manuscript from some agents, and things moved quickly. The agent I chose sold the book to Simon & Schuster (Atria and Scribner Canada) in a few days. When I got the news, the first feeling — before joy — was immense relief. It sounds silly, but other writers will know the feeling: If I didn’t get the novel published, I felt like I’d be letting the characters down.
What’s next for you?
I’m writing my second novel with the usual churn of exhilaration, doubt, and determination. And I’m also helping develop the screen adaptation of The Other Valley.
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