Introduction
Garth Nix
It is a difficult task to write an introduction to a novel by the incomparable Diana Wynne Jones, because all the introduction required is, “I really think you should read this book.”
Go on. Then, if you still want an introduction, you can come back here later and read the rest of this. Or go and pick up another Diana Wynne Jones novel that also won’t need an introduction.
It doesn’t matter which novel. There are very few authors about whom I could happily say, “read any book, they’re all good, and many of them are not only good, they’re great,” but Diana Wynne Jones is certainly among that select number.
Her novels are also often great in different ways, so that when it comes to recommending particular works of Diana’s, I will change my recommendation based upon the prospective reader, their current mood, the weather, and the phase of the moon. If I am actually lending a book, I also consider how recently I read it and whether or not I can bear to see it leave my library before I get a chance to read it again.
If greatly pressed, I guess there is a particular charmed circle of Diana Wynne Jones books that are my particular favorites, books that I return to time and time again. This “best of the best” list, in no particular order, includes Power of Three (the first Diane Wynne Jones I ever read, at age thirteen), Archer’s Goon, Dogsbody, Eight Days of Luke, Charmed Life, Enchanted Glass, Howl’s Moving Castle, and of course, Fire and Hemlock.
I was twenty-two when Fire and Hemlock was published. I bought it immediately when it was released, having been a committed Diana Wynne Jones reader for almost a decade. At the time I was studying writing and literature at what is now the University of Canberra, happily working on my own first novel, and not very happily deconstructing numerous classic novels. Very few of those books have stayed with me the way Fire and Hemlock has lingered on in my head.
It is the mark of a very good book that not only does it resonate for years, you can also reread it and enjoy the reminiscence of your past readings and younger self (or selves), while at the same time having an entirely new reading experience.
Fire and Hemlock is just such a book, rewarding each rereading, whether it be a year or five years or a decade on, with new nuances of story and character, with new understandings and a re-arrangement and enlargement of the thoughts that it once inspired.
I think the first time I read Fire and Hemlock, I saw only Polly’s story, and I mean “saw,” because the book was so vivid in my head. The others to my mind were a brilliant supporting cast, but it was Polly’s story. Or so I thought, until the next time I read it, a few years later, and I saw things a little differently and Thomas Lynn came into closer focus. Later still, I found myself interested in Polly’s grandmother, and in the sadness of her mother, and in the musicians of Tom’s quartet.
The story that ties all these characters together is typically imaginative and multi-layered. Though the plot is inspired by the ballads “Thomas the Rhymer” and “Tam Lin,” the novel is not a “retelling” of these legends. As always when Diana Wynne Jones takes a piece of mythology, she brings her own unique perspective and inventive skill to it, creating a story that no one else could tell.
One particular talent she has is the gift to take the commonplace, the suburban and ordinary, and make it rich and strange—while still retaining its normality, so you can believe it without any difficulty at all. Whether it is Norse gods inhabiting a pool hall (as in Eight Days of Luke), or the Queen of the Fairies dividing her time between a suburban mansion and a city flat, Diana manages to make it both believable and fantastical at the same time.
Fire and Hemlock was way ahead of its time when it was published in 1985. It is a coming-of-age story, but one that even now would be considered ambitious, tracking the life of Polly Whittacker from the age of around ten to the age of nineteen, framed by the older Polly trying to remember a past that has been magically erased and altered. Within that frame there is the Thomas the Rhymer plotline of a man destined to be sacrificed unless his true love can save him, but woven around that are numerous other storylines, embellishments, and adornments. Fire and Hemlock is a quest story, a love story, an adventure story, a coming-of-age story, a dysfunctional family story, a story about stories, a school story, a family saga, a mystery story, and a whole host of other kinds of stories—all worked together so wonderfully well that you will never find a stitch, or even think to look for one.
Before I wrote this introduction, I naturally read the book again, for the seventh time, maybe even the eighth. I hadn’t read it for six years, a figure I easily established by a form of archaeology, as after fruitlessly searching my shelf of Diana Wynne Jones books, I had to unstack book boxes in my shed until I came to the layer of boxes packed for the move to my current house. Once again I read it in a single sitting, late at night, and again noticed new things, as well as relishing the old.
I also read it with my writer’s eye more active than I ever have done before, but I came to no newer conclusion than one I arrived at all those years ago as a student writer. It is a conclusion that I think has been shared by many other writers.
I hope one day I will be able to write a book even half as good as this one.
I wrote the introduction above before the terrible news of Diana’s death on March 26, 2011. I still find it difficult to believe she’s gone, because for a while it seemed her strength of character, eccentric optimism, and just sheer magical nature might beat the cancer she had been fighting for some time. But she lives on in her books, and so is Everywhere and Nowhere, gone but never forgotten.
Garth Nix
Hunsdon House (just visiting), 2011