dwj
Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favourite writers for over twenty-five years, died last week.
When I was very young, in fact about as far back as I can remember, my parents regularly took me to Beeston Library, the nearest public library to where we lived. I can still picture it: the small exhibition area to the left of the main entrance, the staircase up to the children's section on the first floor, and the mysterious and uncharted landscape of the grown-ups' section. I can also, perhaps strangely, remember how it smelt: a faint, almost comforting mixture of well-thumbed paper and polished wooden floors.
Once I got the hang of reading (I have a clear but probably retconned memory of suddenly realising, one day at infants' school, why so much effort was being expended in teaching us these symbols and the sounds that went along with them) it just seemed completely normal to devour as many books as I could get my hands on, in batches of four or six at a time. One day, at the age of about five or six, just as we were about to go on our annual fortnight's holiday, I ambled out into the drive where my parents were packing the last few things into the caravan, and proudly announced that I'd finished all of my books. There then followed a quick trip to the library to obtain another six books; it was patiently explained to me that this shouldn't be regarded as a challenge, and that these new books would have to last the whole of the next two weeks.
At some point (probably around the age of eleven or twelve) I kept noticing a book called Archer's Goon, which had a black cover depicting three people hovering over a house. I think the reason I kept noticing it was that my dad had recently introduced me (via some records borrowed from the grown-ups' section on the ground floor) to the highly esteemed (but, as it turned out, completely unrelated) Goon Show. A little while later, I happened to borrow a book called The Magicians of Caprona from the same shelf. It had a dark blue cover, and the summary on the back assured me that it indeed featured magicians (I'd been caught out by misleading titles before: J Meade Faulkner's otherwise enthralling classic adventure story Moonfleet had turned out to involve no spaceships whatsoever).
So I took it home and read it, and found it so absorbing that on at least one occasion my dad had to tell me to eat my breakfast because otherwise I'd miss the school bus and then I'd be in trouble because neither he nor my mum had time to drive me in. I reread it several years ago for the first time in about ten or fifteen years, and was pleasantly surprised to find how much of it had stuck in my mind: the rivalry between the Montana and Petrocchi families, the relationship between magic and music, Benvenuto the cat, the Duchess, the Angel, Tonino and Angelica being turned into puppets in the Duke's Punch and Judy show, the conference with Chrestomanci at the palace. (In comparison, I know I've read at least the first five Harry Potter books, because there are copies with creased spines on my bookshelves, but even if you offered me a substantial sum of money, I don't think I could tell you anything about what happens in them.)
I can't remember which of her books I read next, but I definitely read the library's copies of Charmed Life (which amongst other things explained who this Chrestomanci fellow was), Archer's Goon, Eight Days of Luke, Dogsbody, A Tale of Time City, The Ogre Downstairs, Howl's Moving Castle and Witch Week in relatively short order.
I really liked Archer's Goon, with its seven wizards running a town behind the scenes, and for a while I half-seriously kept an eye out for evidence of them (or people like them) controlling Nottingham, before eventually coming to the disappointed conclusion that bureaucrats and politicians seemed to be in charge.
Eight Days of Luke is an interesting one. I'd read bits of Norse mythology a few years earlier, so when a character called Mr Chew turned up, followed by a one-eyed gentleman called Mr Wedding, accompanied by two ravens, then I started to twig what was probably going on. But I didn't realise who Luke really was until the end of the book - which I initially felt a bit silly about, because if I'd figured out who Mr Chew, Mr Wedding, and Mr and Mrs Fry were, then surely I should have put the remaining pieces of the puzzle together. But then it occurred to me that my failure to see what was right in front of me was entirely to be expected, considering the identity of the character in question. Some years later, I read Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which shares a central premise with Eight Days of Luke, and exactly the same thing happened: I got tricked by the same character. (I think it's a testimony to the talent and originality of both Jones and Gaiman that they can each take the same basic premise and do something completely different with it.)
I read most of Witch Week during a school concert: I was in the choir, but we were only in about a third of the programme, so I surreptitiously read during the band and orchestra bits. (My classmate Richard read most of it over my shoulder, and came to find me at school the next morning to ask "so, who actually was the witch then?" - the concert had finished before we got to the end of the story.)
I didn't read The Time of the Ghost or Fire and Hemlock until later but they both became two of my favourites. Hexwood was excellent but baffling, and I must reread it sometime soon to see if I can figure out exactly what was going on with the time travel.
I got to meet Diana once, at the 1999 Eastercon. She was very friendly and approachable, and kindly signed my copy of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (her wonderfully funny, scrupulously cross-referenced deconstruction of pretty much every fantasy trope and cliché you can think of), and I nervously told her how I'd loved reading her books as a child, and still enjoyed them now.
The world seems a greyer and less magical place now. My condolences to everyone else who loved her books, and to those who knew her in person.
When I was very young, in fact about as far back as I can remember, my parents regularly took me to Beeston Library, the nearest public library to where we lived. I can still picture it: the small exhibition area to the left of the main entrance, the staircase up to the children's section on the first floor, and the mysterious and uncharted landscape of the grown-ups' section. I can also, perhaps strangely, remember how it smelt: a faint, almost comforting mixture of well-thumbed paper and polished wooden floors.
Once I got the hang of reading (I have a clear but probably retconned memory of suddenly realising, one day at infants' school, why so much effort was being expended in teaching us these symbols and the sounds that went along with them) it just seemed completely normal to devour as many books as I could get my hands on, in batches of four or six at a time. One day, at the age of about five or six, just as we were about to go on our annual fortnight's holiday, I ambled out into the drive where my parents were packing the last few things into the caravan, and proudly announced that I'd finished all of my books. There then followed a quick trip to the library to obtain another six books; it was patiently explained to me that this shouldn't be regarded as a challenge, and that these new books would have to last the whole of the next two weeks.
At some point (probably around the age of eleven or twelve) I kept noticing a book called Archer's Goon, which had a black cover depicting three people hovering over a house. I think the reason I kept noticing it was that my dad had recently introduced me (via some records borrowed from the grown-ups' section on the ground floor) to the highly esteemed (but, as it turned out, completely unrelated) Goon Show. A little while later, I happened to borrow a book called The Magicians of Caprona from the same shelf. It had a dark blue cover, and the summary on the back assured me that it indeed featured magicians (I'd been caught out by misleading titles before: J Meade Faulkner's otherwise enthralling classic adventure story Moonfleet had turned out to involve no spaceships whatsoever).
So I took it home and read it, and found it so absorbing that on at least one occasion my dad had to tell me to eat my breakfast because otherwise I'd miss the school bus and then I'd be in trouble because neither he nor my mum had time to drive me in. I reread it several years ago for the first time in about ten or fifteen years, and was pleasantly surprised to find how much of it had stuck in my mind: the rivalry between the Montana and Petrocchi families, the relationship between magic and music, Benvenuto the cat, the Duchess, the Angel, Tonino and Angelica being turned into puppets in the Duke's Punch and Judy show, the conference with Chrestomanci at the palace. (In comparison, I know I've read at least the first five Harry Potter books, because there are copies with creased spines on my bookshelves, but even if you offered me a substantial sum of money, I don't think I could tell you anything about what happens in them.)
I can't remember which of her books I read next, but I definitely read the library's copies of Charmed Life (which amongst other things explained who this Chrestomanci fellow was), Archer's Goon, Eight Days of Luke, Dogsbody, A Tale of Time City, The Ogre Downstairs, Howl's Moving Castle and Witch Week in relatively short order.
I really liked Archer's Goon, with its seven wizards running a town behind the scenes, and for a while I half-seriously kept an eye out for evidence of them (or people like them) controlling Nottingham, before eventually coming to the disappointed conclusion that bureaucrats and politicians seemed to be in charge.
Eight Days of Luke is an interesting one. I'd read bits of Norse mythology a few years earlier, so when a character called Mr Chew turned up, followed by a one-eyed gentleman called Mr Wedding, accompanied by two ravens, then I started to twig what was probably going on. But I didn't realise who Luke really was until the end of the book - which I initially felt a bit silly about, because if I'd figured out who Mr Chew, Mr Wedding, and Mr and Mrs Fry were, then surely I should have put the remaining pieces of the puzzle together. But then it occurred to me that my failure to see what was right in front of me was entirely to be expected, considering the identity of the character in question. Some years later, I read Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which shares a central premise with Eight Days of Luke, and exactly the same thing happened: I got tricked by the same character. (I think it's a testimony to the talent and originality of both Jones and Gaiman that they can each take the same basic premise and do something completely different with it.)
I read most of Witch Week during a school concert: I was in the choir, but we were only in about a third of the programme, so I surreptitiously read during the band and orchestra bits. (My classmate Richard read most of it over my shoulder, and came to find me at school the next morning to ask "so, who actually was the witch then?" - the concert had finished before we got to the end of the story.)
I didn't read The Time of the Ghost or Fire and Hemlock until later but they both became two of my favourites. Hexwood was excellent but baffling, and I must reread it sometime soon to see if I can figure out exactly what was going on with the time travel.
I got to meet Diana once, at the 1999 Eastercon. She was very friendly and approachable, and kindly signed my copy of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (her wonderfully funny, scrupulously cross-referenced deconstruction of pretty much every fantasy trope and cliché you can think of), and I nervously told her how I'd loved reading her books as a child, and still enjoyed them now.
The world seems a greyer and less magical place now. My condolences to everyone else who loved her books, and to those who knew her in person.