How to see ghosts or surely bring them to you

Among Others is a beautiful book.
It's one of those books that you imagine the author has written just for you, and it struck so many chords with me in so many ways.

The book's protagonist, Mori, has just saved the world from her evil mother's magic. Her twin has been killed while doing so, and Mori herself is badly injured. Sent to a boarding school where she makes few friends, she joins a local book group and talks to fairies, all the while devouring authors such as LeGuin, Zelazny and Tolkien. Mori is Welsh, from the valleys, and she tells us that fairies particularly favor places where humans have been , and where they aren't any more-places like abandoned tramways, old buildings, and industrial relics. 

It's true that magic is not the main focus of the book. But the strength of Among Others is that it conveys quite perfectly what it means to be a lonely bookish child (full disclosure; I am a twin and was once a weird, bookish child) quite desperate for escape. I especially loved the passage where Mori quotes Psalm 121 'I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from where comes my help."'

We grew up, my sister and I, on the edge of Nottingham in an area rich in post-industrial wastelands- -abandoned railway tracks, flooded gravel pits, and the grounds of stately homes that had long since been turned over to the state. Our family's escape route was always Derbyshire and the Dark Peak, our countryside peat-covered fells, our skies grey. We spent our weekends fell walking, and we holidayed in Scotland, the Pennines, the Lakes and once we got older, the Pyrenees.The hills have always been my help.

I have spent the last few years living near my man's family in Suffolk, where the fairies must have a far easier time than they ever did in Nottingham. I now live in the far south of New Zealand, though my twin still lives and works in the Midlands.We spend a lot of time in the mountains. 

We will return at some point. I love it here, but it is a long way away, and Among Others brought me a little closer to home.

But there are so many mountains here.

And they are all so beautiful.