I don’t often dip into speculative literary fiction, and my success rate is low enough that even when I saw an intriguing review of Scott Alexander Howard’s debut novel The Other Valley—and I don’t even recall where—I approached with some trepidation. But I do like time travel stories, and my library had a copy, so I figured there was no harm in taking a little peek. I was rewarded with my favorite novel of 2024.

The Other Valley takes place in an isolated small town surrounded by mountains. But on the other side of the mountains are not other cities and towns, but rather other versions of the same town, shifted 20 years into the future on one side and 20 years into the past on the other. With the knowledge that a change in the past would alter 20 years of history and functionally annihilate the people who have grown from that history, travel over the mountains is heavily restricted, allowed only in limited situations in which mourners may don disguises to take one last look at departed loved ones. But the lead—a shy, introverted girl without much ambition—inadvertently recognizes future figures on two occasions that would prove pivotal in her own life. The Other Valley is the story of the consequences of this unwanted foreknowledge, as she wrestles with the costs both of intervention and of inaction. 

The Other Valley uses its time travel mechanism in a way that will feel familiar to sci-fi readers, though it has no interest at all in sci-fi worldbuilding—if you’re going to be bothered by a 20th century standard of living in an isolated small town bordered only by its past and future selves, don’t read this. Combine that with a focus on mundane moments in the lives of ordinary people, and it’s easy to see why this one is marketed as speculative literary fiction instead of sci-fi. But unlike some of my less positive experiences with litfic, the speculative element and the mundane moments both feel completely integral to the story. It’s the little moments that so thoroughly sucked me in, but so many of the little moments would not exist without the specter of future knowledge hanging over the lead’s mind. 

While the importance of twenty-year increments may not be standard fare, The Other Valley doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to time travel. Time loops, grandfather paradoxes, and the problem of foreknowledge have all been long since explored. But there are a couple wrinkles that still manage to stand out. First, and perhaps most obviously, is the heavy regulation on travel to the neighboring valleys, with travel only allowed to those in mourning. In stories with well-established time travel, it tends to be used for either economic or military purposes. That it’s used for neither in this case is a refreshing change, and centering time travel on mourning helps establish the way grief will become a central theme of the novel. Second, The Other Valley introduces the devastating consequences of changing the past fairly early in the story, but it also has plenty of elements that would be right at home in a fatalistic, time loop tale. In this way, it walks the line between two different ways of handling time travel narratives, effectively keeping the reader in the dark about the ultimate plot resolution. 

But for all that I love time travel stories, it’s the character development that truly makes The Other Valley my favorite book of the year. It combines tight focus on a single character with the longer timeline that comes from two worlds separated by twenty years, coming together in a work that feels small-scale and grounded while still showing the long-term consequences of those small-scale decisions. I don’t read enough litfic to accurately judge the various comparisons made in the blurb—Mandel, Ishiguro, etc.—but I found that this combination of character focus and wider temporal scope reminded me of nothing more than one of my all-time favorite fantasy series: The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. The Other Valley doesn’t have the same epic fantasy aspirations, but Abraham and Howard both deliver the mundane character moments in a way that makes me want to savor them, and both works share the big time skips to show long-term consequences of those character decisions. There aren’t many books that so effectively have it both ways regarding the tight and broad focus, and in both cases, it makes for an excellent read. It’s possible that there are better points of comparison that I just haven’t read, but a book reminding me of The Long Price Quartet is a massive compliment. 

I came in to The Other Valley with a healthy dose of skepticism, and I was utterly floored. It’s thoroughly engrossing in its character study, with a fabulous use of the speculative premise and an ending that ties the plot threads together wonderfully. Admittedly, this does sit at the intersection of a number of things I particularly like—time travel, character focus, longer timelines—so it may not hit the same way for every reader. But this is my favorite novel of 2024, and it’s not especially close. 

Recommended if you like: character-driven speculative fiction, speculative litfic, the problem of foreknowledge.

Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Dreams and Published in 2024, and it also takes place in a Small Town.

Overall rating: 19 of Tar Vol’s 20. Five stars on Goodreads.