Fire and Hemlock

Before I could write up my impressions of Diana Wynne Jones' novel Fire and Hemlock, based on the Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer stories, I learned that Jenny believes it's even better on rereading, and since this was my first time through it, all I can give you is first impressions.

Like most readers, I was appalled with the characterization of the main character's (Polly's) parents, who neglect her to an extent almost unbelievable even in fiction--at one point, leaving her stranded in a strange city with no food, money, or shelter. And like any reader, I was enchanted with the magic that allows Polly and her friend Tom Lynn to imagine things and then see them come true. Another pleasure for readers is seeing Tom sending books to Polly, and hearing about what she learns from reading them, along with her occasional ignorant mistake before she has read something, like the time she asks if she can call him "Uncle Tom."

As in any novel by Diana Wynne Jones, one of the incidental pleasures is in the little slices of psychological verity, like this one:
"Polly came away from the Headmistress to find that the rest of the school regarded her as a heroine. This is nothing like being a hero, which is inside you. This was public. People asked for her autograph and wanted to be her friend. She came out of school at the end of the afternoon surrounded by a mob of people all trying to talk to her at once. It made Polly's head ache."

The title image, of a painting in which the young Polly could see images that the older Polly does not (at least for a while, until she gets her memories of Tom Lynn back) also seems to me to have some psychological reality. How many times as a child did you look at a crack in the ceiling or the uneven pattern of tiles on a floor and see a face or figure? Do you still see them? I sometimes do, especially when I'm tired or running a fever, but I think when I'm feeling well I'm like most other adults and don't have the same kind of attention or time to notice.

I enjoyed the first part of the ending, in which Polly reconciles her two sets of memories--one with Tom Lynn included, and one without, which she traces back to a promise she made to forget him--and has an adult discussion with him, for the first time, about the risks of loving him and involving herself in his world.

The second part of the ending, though, with a test involving a pool, was confusing. While still thinking about it, I was confronted with the reactions of other celebrators of Diana Wynne Jones week (Eva, for one) who also didn't understand the ending after their first reading. I found the ending of Fire and Hemlock slightly disappointing, but after consideration decided that perhaps such disappointment is an appropriate response to the ending of a story about the tricky ways of the Queen of the Fairies. Who ever comes away from such an experience feeling satisfied? You're lucky to come away at all, as the story of Tam Lin amply testifies.

The other result of this first reading is that my memory was tickling me with the central image of the empty autumn pool, and I found out why when I read that DWJ based the image on one from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets (see Two Sides to Nowhere and her links to DWJ's essay "The Heroic Ideal").

Deep Secret

Probably because I read the Chrestomanci stories when my children were younger, I had the impression that Diana Wynne Jones was a children's author, so when Jenny proposed Diana Wynne Jones week, I decided to read the only DWJ novel that I could find in the adult section of my public library, Deep Secret.

After six chapters (75 pages) of narration by a male character, Rupert, the narrative switches to a chapter from a female character, Maree, whose chapters then begin to alternate with Rupert's more frequently until you can tell they're going to fall in love, despite the way they seem to hate each other at first (it reminds me of Zoe's first reaction to Wash in the Firefly episode entitled Out of Gas: "he bothers me; I don't know what it is").

I enjoyed the way characters who didn't seem all that important to Rupert--who is a Magid, a sort of Magician/Benevolent Policeman for the universe--became vastly important in the plot, reinforcing the idea that despite his vast powers, there is a bigger and even more powerful planner behind his whole adventure. And I was greatly amused by the way Rupert's mentor, now disembodied, haunts a parking lot, with inexplicable strains of Scarlatti coming out of the invisible car to which he's confined. An incidental delight is the off-hand way a teenage boy sums up the things in which his mother has been deeply interested: "she kept wanting to tell me until I said it was all boring nonsense and went away." (If this doesn't delight you, my guess is that you've never been the mother of a fourteen-year old boy.)

The deep secrets of the title turn out to be hidden in an interesting way:
"Some of them are things you more or less know anyway. If I were to tell you some, you might laugh--I know I did--because a lot of the secrets are half there in well-known or childish things, like nursery rhymes or fairy stories. I kid you not! One of our jobs is to put those things around and make sure they're well enough known for people to put them together in the right way when the time comes. Or again...some of the secrets are only in parts. These are the dangerous secrets. I've got the memorized parts of at least seventy of them. If another Magid has need of my piece of a secret, he or she can come and ask me, and if the need is real enough, then I put my part together with his or hers. It acts as a check."

The pacing of the story is masterful; the secrets are revealed one by one in a very satisfying manner. I'm still not sure that that Diana Wynne Jones writes for adults--this book has a centaur on the cover, which may not have been her choice, but it does accurately illustrate some of the scenes from the novel.

Why even think about what kind of audience a novel is aimed at? It's something I think about with fantasy novels--is Fantasy by its very nature (a way to step outside yourself and see the world differently) a genre mostly for children and young adults--that is, for people whose views of the world are growing and changing at a very fast pace?

Firebirds

Once when I was in high school, a group of guys who had been talking about cars for a while turned to me and politely attempted to include me in the conversation. "What kind of car would you get, Jeanne?" they asked. "A Firebird," I replied, with little hesitation. There was a stir in the group, surprise that I had a ready answer, and such a good one. A little later, they found out that I knew of a symphony called the Firebird and liked the image (this was well before Fawkes popularized his species). But I will always treasure my memory of the momentary admiration in their eyes.

A few years ago, my daughter brought home a collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction stories in a collection entitled Firebirds. I was predisposed to like it, of course, but it's a truly wonderful collection, especially for the novice reader. It's heavy on Fantasy and very light on Science Fiction. There are a couple of fairy stories, Cotillion and Byndley. There's a very unusual story entitled Mariposa, by Nancy Springer. We like Beauty by Sherwood Smith, Hope Chest by Garth Nix, Little Dot by Diana Wynne Jones, Remember Me by Nancy Farmer, and Flotsam by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

The standout story, however is by Megan Whalen Turner and entitled The Baby in the Night Deposit Box. In it, a small town bank that had just put up a billboard advertising "your treasure will be safe with us" gets a baby in their night deposit box with a rattle, a teething ring, and a note that says "Our treasure, please keep her safe." They take care of the baby, who turns out to be a girl, and keep her safe from the world outside the bank, including a woman from Child Protective Services who keeps attempting to take her away. At one of her court hearings, the girl (now called Penny, short for Precious Treasure) tells the Judge that the night watchman's wife helps her when she feels afraid of shadows in the night:

"She said they were just shadows and that shadows all by themselves couldn't hurt anyone. I didn't have to be afraid. I just had to pretend that they were the shadows of bunnies. That any shadow, if you look at it right, could be the shadow of a bunny. She said I should take my rattle, because I always have my rattle with me, and my ring." She held up her arm to show the teething ring that now sat like a bracelet around her wrist. "She said I should point my rattle at the shadows and say 'You're a bunny,' and then I won't be afraid anymore."

When Penny is eighteen, she leaves the bank to rescue her royal (of course) parents from a wicked usurper with lots of minions that cast scary shadows. Naturally, she does what she has been taught:

"No--" shrieked the enchantress. "No--"
"You," Penny said firmly, "are a bunny."

Like my answer to the car question, the ending of the story is not what the reader might have expected.