Diana Wynne Jones

[rachelmanija]

I just read that Diana Wynne Jones has died. She had been very ill with cancer for at least the last year.

I can't remember if my first Diana Wynne Jones book was Charmed Life or Fire and Hemlock; they're both still among my very favorites of hers. Or it might have been the odd, spooky Power of Three, which could be classified as a "psychic kids" book, but was not exactly a typical example of the genre.

After I read whichever one that was, I began to haunt used bookshops, libraries, thrift shops in search of her novels, until I slowly, slowly managed to obtain everything she'd ever written, even her very slight and hard-to-find first novel Wilkin's Tooth. I was thrilled when her books finally came back into print in the USA, but I got enough enjoyment from the search, not to mention the finds, that I don't regret the probable hundreds of hours I spent prowling dusty stacks.

She wrote at least five of my very favorite novels of all time: Witch Week, Fire and Hemlock, Charmed Life, The Homeward Bounders... The fifth is always difficult: Do I select Archer's Goon or Howl's Moving Castle for their perfect puzzle-box structures, with every element clicking into logical place at the end? The Ogre Downstairs for the living toffee bars undulating down the stairs? The Year of the Griffin for its all-too-recognizable portrait of college life, complete with curses and ninjas? The heartbreaking Dogsbody?

Everybody who likes Jones' work at all seems to have a completely different list of favorite Jones novels, which speaks to her versatility and quirkiness. I love Fire and Hemlock because it's so funny and numinous - a very unusual combination - but others find it unreadable or flat. I didn't think Dark Lord of Derkholm was funny at all, but it's on plenty of people's top three lists.

I read an essay of hers in which she discussed being neglected as a child, and noted that Time of the Ghost was directly autobiographical, except for the ghosts and curses and witches and split personalities and time travel. Her adults are often villainous, but nearly always have understandable motives, and just as often are complicated and sympathetic; her children are surprisingly unsentimentalized.

I can't read Fire and Hemlock without breaking my heart, but in the good kind of way (if you like that kind of thing); I can't read the "worms in custard" or "Simon Says" or "MY SPIRIT IS BEING DRAGGED TO UTTAR PRADESH TO UTTER DESTRUCTION I MEAN" scenes in Witch Week without weeping with laughter.

It seems like a good time to re-read and review her novels. Look for them here.

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1: Charmed Life / The Lives of Christopher Chant

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 2: The Magicians of Caprona / Witch Week

Howl's Moving Castle

Year of the Griffin

Dogsbody

Fire and Hemlock

The Homeward Bounders

Comments

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

People don't tend to grandstand about their baggage in DWJ either, they just kind of quietly stow it behind them. But if you look at them in profile of course it's there.

Well said, and so true.