Book discussion: Fire and Hemlock, Parts One and Two

[shimotsuki]

Here is the first of two discussion posts for Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. It may be the case that we've all read the whole book already (I certainly found it hard to put down), but let's keep to the original plan and discuss only Part One ("New Hero") and Part Two ("Now Here") in this post so we don't accidentally spoil anyone who hasn

Comments

[shimotsuki]

I did have moments of faint unease at the start, because of the age difference. [...] Those odd prickles died away as things became clearer, but I may come back to this later. ;)

Yes, this is something I'm sitting on my hands about until the second discussion as well. ;) But the situation was more interesting, and less icky, than I had feared at first. Although I did have similar thoughts to you and jobey_in_error, being rather amazed that all those adults were willing to let Polly go off on her own with this man that no one knew anything about.

it was on my second read that I noticed when she passed under a street light, or when colours became particularly vivid or glowed, that magic would follow.

Ooh, that's really interesting, and I hadn't noticed this pattern at all. But that even fits in with the glimpse of water in the dry pool in the funeral scene, where a sunbeam first catches Polly's eye.

Polly playing football to improve her hero skills and timing.

Yes! I think it must have been a little bit heroic for her to throw herself into something she didn't know anything about, too.

I couldn’t work out how Tom and Polly were causing the magic in this half, though he was obviously beginning to suss it out and use Polly.

My thoughts exactly -- and even though some things do become clearer as we read on, I've still got lots of questions along these lines for when we get to the last half of the book. ;)

I’d read Tam Lin many years ago, and only remember the gist of it, but the quotes above the chapters tell their own tale.

I have a Steeleye Span recording of it, but I didn't know that was what it was, because I'm awful at making out lyrics when I'm listening to music, lol. But as soon as I saw "Carterhaugh" in one of those chapter headings, I realized where I knew the name from, and had to go give Steeleye Span another listen. (There's a certain element in the Janet/Tam Lin relationship that doesn't even begin to come up in DWJ's story, and it's a darn good thing, too, lol.)

The essay the author’s written about her influences for this book makes interesting reading IF you have finished it. And also made me scratch my head a bit more!

Ooh, interesting! Is that in your copy of the book, or did you find it online somewhere?

[gilpin25]

Oh, Steeleye Span! I shall have to search that out. They came and played near us last year at the folk festival, and we only saw it afterwards as we'd probably have made the effort to go.

Is that in your copy of the book, or did you find it online somewhere?

I found it online; scroll down to the bottom and you'll see the linked pages of the essay.

***SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED READING!***

The Heroic Ideal

[shimotsuki]

Apparently Steeleye Span used an unusual musical setting for the ballad; something I read said they used three different Bulgarian folk tunes for it, because they found that there was an equivalent of the Tam Lin story in Bulgaria too. So I've been meaning to check out the Fairport Convention version, to compare. But the SS version is useful, because one of the places where the music changes is exactly at the point where [spoiler] tells [spoiler] to pay attention to "the charm". ;)

Thanks for the link to the essay! I will definitely have to check that out.