Book discussion: Fire and Hemlock, Parts Three and Four (and Coda)
Here is the second of two discussion posts for Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. This post is currently public, so that anyone interested can read and join in the discussion, but if any of my f-listers would prefer that I f-lock the post instead, let me know and I will do that
( Read more... )
Reply
Anyway: It must have been Polly who gave that other string quartet the flu!
She was at Reg and Joanna's, and couldn't sleep, so she got out the stolen photo and fell asleep holding it. And then, lo and behold, those poor unknown musicians are felled by the flu, and the Dumas Quartet stays in town one day longer than planned, and they are there when Polly needs help.
I suspect this is why Mr. Leroy found Polly in Bristol, too, that he knew that some magic had been worked there on Polly's behalf.
Reply
She was at Reg and Joanna's, and couldn't sleep, so she got out the stolen photo and fell asleep holding it. And then, lo and behold, those poor unknown musicians are felled by the flu, and the Dumas Quartet stays in town one day longer than planned, and they are there when Polly needs help.
That's... kind of awesome.
Reply
Oh my. That's one heck of a catch. :D
Reply
THANK YOU for getting things going around here again! I'd been hoping someone might start a discussion about the end of the story. I stopped in my reread just about at the start of Part Four, so I need to pick that up again, but I'll be back with thoughts in another day or so.
Reply
I've thought of a couple of other things I forgot to mention. The ending I find vaguely dissatisfying, but it's hard to pinpoint quite why. On my first read, I assumed it was because I was simply trying to work out what on earth was going on; on the second (and third and fourth, lol) the climatic scene and resolution all seems a bit...quick? I'm not sure that's the right summing up either, but I do feel it's the romantic/love side of things that suffers from the speed. Though they're grasping hands at the end in a committed fashion, reminiscent of some other couple. ;)
One of my favourite things about the book - and I'd have DEVOURED this as a child - was the idea that you can let your own imagination take flight, and basically create the narrative of your own life. And that there is no reason why girls can't be heroes.
Reply
Leroy is from the old French form of Le roy. Modern French translates as le roi, which is the king.
Interesting info towards the end of the DWJ essay about some of the other name choices, especially Polly's own. And how the characters are arranged in groups of 3. Most of those went straight over my reading head at the time, but I did see Laurel, Ivy and Joanna. Ivy is the paranoid, clinging side of Laurel, who confuses fact with fiction and see betrayal. Joanna manages Reg with a strict set of rules, which he cannot deviate from. (The part where he's not allowed home till she's recovered from work makes me snort like mad!)
Reply
You're quicker than I am! ;) I didn't think of the name that way until the very end, when I realized how very Golden Bough-ish things were getting...
Interesting info towards the end of the DWJ essay about some of the other name choices, especially Polly's own.
That is interesting! And not what I was expecting -- I was thinking more along the lines of Terry Pratchett in Monstrous Regiment, about how Polly is sometimes the name of the girl in the old folk-songs who's been wronged. (On the same Steeleye Span album that was where I'd heard the Ballad of Tam Lin, there's also a song called "Gentleman Soldier" in which a young girl called Polly is indeed loved and left, heh.)
(The part where he's not allowed home till she's recovered from work makes me snort like mad!)
Yes! As if he were a troublesome puppy, or child... I almost feel sorry for Reg. But, not quite. ;)
Reply
In the book where I have the 'Heroic Ideal' essay is also a piece written by one of DWJ's sons after her death. One of the several things he talks about is DWJ's difficult relationship with her own mother and how this informed some of the darkness in DWJ's books.
He describes his grandmother as "a formidable woman", a scholarship girl who pulled herself up by her bootstraps and did not particularly want to be a parent. "She certainly could be cruel", he writes, "and very much liked to be admired by men". He goes on to describe how she seems to have informed a number of DWJ villains and then writes this about himself:
"I liked my grandmother, and I got punished for this in several of my mother's books. When I was a teenager I listened to The Doors and did a lot of photography. No doubt in my mother's eyes I was a chilly kind of thing. In Fire and Hemlock there is a chilly public schoolboy called Sebastian who likes The Doors and photography. He also happens ( ... )
Reply
One of my favourite tiny details is while deciding on an outfit to meet the quartet in (this is when they've come back from Australia), Polly rejects a green shirt on the grounds of bad luck - when she sees Tom a few pages later however, the narrative notes he looks tanned in his green shirt, and we all know how well that trip to the carnival went.
Another is the paintings Polly helps Tom pick out in the beginning, not only do their subjects correspond to encounters Tom and Polly have but the reclaiming of some of the paintings by the Leroy's matches up with which situations they had the upper hand in. (I've thought that the Harlequin picture is what helped Mr Leroy get at Polly the night of the pantomime)
Reply
Leave a comment