I am a lover of fantasy literature. An unabashed fan, which is not to say that I am automatically enthused by any dime store pulp novel with a fantasy label slapped on it or that I even frequent the genre (I actually tend to engage with it in spurts), but that the basic concept of the genre appeals to me, and so much so that most, if not all of my writing projects tend to be aimed in that general direction.
The way I put it in a recent conversation with a friend (a brilliant writer himself, with distinct weird fiction and horror fiction backgrounds) was that I find fantasy interesting as a writer because it is more challenging. I know how a person gets up and gets themselves a blanket. But if a person can wave their hand and summon the blanket, it changes things, to put the matter crudely. The fact that the event happens doesn’t interest me, how it happens doesn’t interest me. What interests me, the writer in that situation, is how, when the framework’s of assumptions we make about how our environments work and how we’re allowed to interact with them is changed, human behavior can be changed and at the very least observed from a radically different angle than a traditional story offers.
J.K. Rowling undoubtedly has her spot deepest in my heart when it comes to fantasy—inevitable, seeing as how I grew up reading her books (book one at nine, book seven at seventeen). Rowling and the Harry Potter books formed an important part of my early childhood; I grew up with the characters and not only did I do so, but the books were my first real experience with reading and reading for pleasure. I was a late bloomer, not learning to read until I was seven, and even then I required my grandmother’s (a veteran elementary school teacher with a Master’s degree in early childhood development) special attention and unique motivational skills (I apparently had a tendency to simply memorize the texts we went through in class, and ignored all the foundational teaching). After that, it soon became something that I was capable in, but it was not until Rowling that I discovered a passion and joy in the act and began my ongoing exploration into the wild and sprawling continent of human literature.
This is all to say, (in my own rambling way), that J.K. Rowling as an author has a formative and deep place in my heart when it comes to books and reading. However, British Fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones has a perhaps more unique place there, and I have a special, more grown up sort of fondness for her.
Diana Wynne Jones was born August 16, 1934 in London, and died recently, March 26th of this year, in Bristol. She is an interesting figure—while she rarely topped bestseller lists, and has always been underrated when it comes to popularity with the general public, her name pops up almost continually when younger fantasy and children’s literature authors talk about their influences, and she has a very devoted fan base within the fantasy genre.
When war broke out in 1939, Jones was sent to live in the Welsh countryside with relatives, including a grandfather who was a renowned preacher in the native Welsh tongue, forming an intimate, nostalgic connection between her and Welsh (which she never learned to speak). Afterwards, the family settled down—Jones and her two sisters—and were left mostly to their own devices by their parents, and Jones has written her impression that her and her mother were distant after such a long time apart, and that her mother seemed to treat this as a betrayal almost. This served as a formative influence on young Diana, as a recurring motif of her books are careless or non-present parents, and betrayals on the part of family—in a fashion that bespeaks of traditional fairy tales.
She studied English at St Anne’s College, a branch of Oxford, and graduated in 1956. As far as I can find, her first published book was Changeover in 1970, followed by an illustrious career and dozens of other titles, including two that will be published posthumously over the next year.
Luckily, late in her career two events helped Diana Wynne Jones’ popularity to resurge. One, the success of the Harry Potter franchise caused an explosion in the field of children’s literature, and many of her earlier works were republished in order to capitalize off this. Two, the famous Japanese director and founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki made her book Howl’s Moving Castle into a movie, which did very well in the United States and Britain, bringing her name to a wider audience.
This was my first encounter with her, and surely the first encounter many others had. I enjoyed the movie, a lot. And kept rewatching it and every time wondering who this Diana Wynne Jones woman was whose book the movie was based off of (and a rare thing at that, I can’t think of another project Miyazaki has headed up that was based on a Western book). Eventually I went and ordered the book from my branch of the local library system (last summer, when I has having a second childhood and reading dozens of fantasy and children’s books), and read it in just two days.
It floored me. In fact, her book, Howl’s Moving Castle was so good, so perfect, that I found I didn’t like watching the Miyazaki film—which I’d previously loved—anymore. I suddenly realized the movie had this huge scale chaos of war going on—this baffling artistic decision that made the movie’s plot both confusing and took focus away from the characters.
Diana Wynne Jones, on the other hand, had a more complicated story arc, but one that was easier to digest and that was far less chaotic and more organic. Beyond any of that, she had a larger cast of more interesting characters than the film did, and she was simply so damned funny, in a wry, very British sort of way. More than anything, I don’t (unfortunately) appreciate the movie because Jones’ book is a roaring laugh-fest—it’s witty, the characters are very much alive, and the story is an intimate and fun read, with a beautiful setting (one that Miyazaki did capture well).
Old Diana hooked me on the first try, finicky and fickle fish that I am. Quickly I reached out for what other works of hers I could get my hands. First I went and checked out House of Many Ways a novel set in the same world as Howl’s Moving Castle and in which Howl and Sophie make a guest appearance. It shocked me to find that this novel, written many years after the first (and published in 2008 I believe), was even more wickedly funny than ‘Castle’, and had the added bonus of possessing a character that seemed a replica of me, though perhaps more absentminded and uncoordinated.
My own words cannot quite tackle the emotions present here (I’m afraid I’ve grown up too much to try and express the childlike joy I find in the reading some books), and can’t do justice to the sheer fun-ness of Jones’ stories. They are children’s fantasies, with adult undertones. They are hilarious, witty stories, but don’t lose their seriousness as a narrative or undermine the intimacy of their characters.
After this I pursued one more of her books, Conrad’s Fate, it being the only of the Chrestomanci books that I could get my hands on at the time, and read it. Funny and charming, but in the end less imaginative and a bit less interesting the than the others I’d read. It wasn’t a big hit; though very good, it was a lot less memorable than the others. In a vague manner of speaking, its problem was that it dragged too much and was not quite as fun and humorously as her other works had been.
And around that time I got involved in reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, (another wonderful and intelligent children’s fantasy series of surprising intelligence…I need to reread it and rip some quotes from it for a piece here sometime) and then tackled Ursula Le Guin’s entire Earthsea series (except for the short story collection), followed by her work The Left Hand of Darkness, and later by some reading on Kenneth Grahame, Lois Lowry, and the like, ending the summer rereading the Harry Potter series in reverse order (I don’t know if I’ll be able to read the series again, it’s just gotten to where it’s too emotional of an experience for me; the weight of each past reading bears down on me hard, whenever I get to the end I get a bit sad and melancholic and nostalgic—I think those three go together—particularly as I progressed from the darker, more mature later stories to the soft-hearted, innocent early ones, which bring so much nostalgia in their reading, and when I’m done, having spent eight dedicated years always waiting for the next installment of the story, with the series done I feel an awkward sense of what to do next).
However, I recently finally got around to reading Charmed Life, a book which I ordered some untold months ago and which sat around in my dorm room for both semesters and also got carried around with me in my luggage to no avail. I honestly don’t know why I avoided the book for so long, but I finally noticed it the other night and thought to myself ‘I might as well check it out.’
Oh lucky I was to have done it, as Diana Wynne Jones promptly slapped me back to my senses and reinvoked my dimmed passions—I had simply forgotten how much I adored her work and writing, distractions had mounted up and she’d slipped to the foreground a bit. I immediately wrote down my first impressions in an excited email to a friend of mine:
Sat down and read Charmed Life tonight. Delightful. Vivid. Loved it. It has been a year since I last sat down and read a book in one sitting, not since my summer of fantasy exploration (last summer)...It made me feel very good that my attention span hadn't gotten too short and that I could still do it and enjoy so much. Every now and again I like to check and make sure I haven't grown up any, and if I have, to revert through any means possible. As always, when reading a book that is so much fun and so good, it's also a bit saddening to be done with the story.
Charmed Life wasn’t as funny as the other works I’d read, but I liked it more than Conrad’s Fate (a bit less than the other two though). As story, it contained better pacing and a better ending than the previous works (you know, better dénouement and a better climax, that sort of stuff). The same great use of characters, well-placed description, and still-present was her wittiness, though more subdued.
Perhaps what makes Diana Wynne Jones (well, made, since her saddening death early this year of lung cancer), so amazing is that she is ostensibly doing something that looks simple, but which is in actuality very hard and that is using magical and fantasy elements so that they come up as convincingly ordinary and commonplace in their world—all the while without slipping into mundanity. And she does this with her subtle use of wry humor in her observations and the simple, straightforward way she makes everything work (and magic is always a bit far in the backdrop, a noted difference to Rowling’s books).
The biggest praise I can give her though, is that every book so far has been an adventure, each different from the last and all so much fun. I’m consoled that at this point by the fact that I still have dozens of her books left to pursue, and look forward to each one of them.
And here is a full bibliography with still present (hopefully) hyperlinks to their Wikipedia pages:
Chrestomanci Series
1. Charmed Life (1977)
2. The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)
3. Conrad's Fate (2005)
4. Witch Week (1982)
5. The Magicians of Caprona (1980)
6. The short stories can be read in any order after that.
• In chronology The Pinhoe Egg is set soon after a short story in Mixed Magics which follows on from "The Magicians of Caprona".
Derkholm series
1. Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) Mythopoeic Fantasy Award See also Jones' remarks on winning the award
2. Year of the Griffin (2000)
Dalemark Quartet
In order of internal chronology:
1. The Spellcoats (1979)
2. Cart and Cwidder (1975)
3. Drowned Ammet (1977)
4. Crown of Dalemark (1993)
Castle series
1. Howl's Moving Castle (1986) Honor book for the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, 2004 Hayao Miyazaki movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
2. Castle in the Air (1990) Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, nominated
3. House of Many Ways (2008)
Magids series
• Deep Secret (1997) (marketed to adults)
• The Merlin Conspiracy (2003)
Miscellaneous
• Changeover (1970) (for adults)
• Wilkins' Tooth (1973) (US title: Witch's Business)
• The Ogre Downstairs (1974)
• Dogsbody (1975) Carnegie Medal, Commended
• Eight Days of Luke (1975)
• Power of Three (1977) Guardian Award, Commended;
• The Time of the Ghost (1981)
• The Homeward Bounders (1981)
• Archer's Goon (1984) Boston Globe - Horn Book Honor Book; World Fantasy Award for Best Novel nominee
• Fire and Hemlock (1985) Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, nominated
• A Tale of Time City (1987)
• Wild Robert (1989)
• Black Maria (1991) (US title: Aunt Maria)
• Yes, Dear (1992) (picture book for the very young)
• A Sudden Wild Magic (1992) (marketed to adults) British Fantasy Award, nominated
• Hexwood (1993)
• Puss in Boots (1999) (for the very young)
• Enna Hittims (2006) (This story originally appeared in Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories)
• The Game (2007) novella
• Enchanted Glass (2010)
• Earwig and the Witch (2011)
Collections
• Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories (1981) (contains two Chrestomanci stories, both also in Mixed Magics)
• Stopping for a Spell (1993)
• Everard's Ride (1994)
• Minor Arcana (1996) British Fantasy Award, nominated
• Believing is Seeing (1999) (similar to Minor Arcana)
• Unexpected Magic (2002
Non-fiction and poetry
• "A Slice of Life" in Now We Are Sick (1991)
• The Medusa article in which Jones discusses her opinions of adult literature as opposed to children's literature.
• The Skiver's Guide (1984)
• "The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings" in the collection Everard's Ride (1994)
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland* (1997) Hugo Award for Nonfiction, nominated; World Fantasy Award Finalist
*The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is considered to be one of the finer works satirizing the lack of creativity within fantasy fiction and its considerable pulp pool.
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