Fire and Hemlock

Rating:
Summary: I have a big question but the book is great!
Review: Diana Wynne Jones is my favorite author and her books are all fantastic. Fire and Hemlock is no exception - I love the way all the elements are intermixed. But if anyone understands the ending, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE explain it to me, that is the one thing flawing this otherwise perfect book.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps my favorite book ever
Review: Fire and Hemlock is a beautiful, skillful, multilayered retelling of a famous Irish myth set in modern England. The reader follows the escapades of a young English girl and her adult friend Tom, a professional cellist. The happy times times with Tom are set against a dark background of magical intrigue that the two friends almost do not believe the existence of until too late. For fans of other Diana Wynn Jones novels, you will recognize her skillful hand here, but this is a longer and far more difficult book than her others- more of an adult story. I found the story to be heartbreakingly beautiful on a first read, and every time that I have read it since I have gained a better understanding and higher appreciation for the story. Though you will have to search long and hard for your own copy, it is much more than worth it. (If you don't want your own copy, but just want to read it, check the hardcover section of a well-stocked children's library.)

Rating:
Summary: Great read for both adult and young adult audiences
Review: I am an adult who has read a fair number of Diana Wynne Jones's books, and I quite enjoyed this one on many levels. I grew up escaping into fiction, a habit that I'm convinced saved my life. As a girl, I would have felt right at home in Fire and Hemlock, with its mysterious, malevolent strangers, and self-serving, neglectful grownups.

Consider this book for the audience it was written for--young adults. It succeeds because at its heart it speaks to the issues of young adults: What's happening to me, what do I do when there's no one to turn to, how do I figure out my life? Everyday issues for young adults attempting to decipher themselves and their world, couched here in mythic, mysterious trappings that make for compelling reading.

The book takes its main character, Polly, from the age of 10 to the age of nineteen, always from her own point of view. Polly's ten-year-old observations and responses ring as true as her nineteen-year-old ones. The story presents a healthy relationship between a ten-year-old and an adult, and depicts how it changes and grows as Polly grows, in contrast to the threadbare relationships Polly has with her self-involved, selfish parents. The story takes Polly's emotional life seriously and deals unflinchingly with her pain when her parents repeatedly fail to show up for her. Her responses to these wounds also ring true.

Consider also that the young adult reader may be discovering for the first time the trail of literary leads Wynne Jones leaves like breadcrumbs throughout the narrative, and the book is almost priceless, both as a reading experience and as an education. In the grip of the mystery-laden plot, a bookish young reader will find it hard to resist looking up these sources for whatever light they might shed on it.

I, too, found the ending a bit confounding, but I was satisfied enough with it to recommend this book as a rich and enjoyable read.




Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Discovery
Review: I discovered this book by accident at a library book sale. I bought it b/c I knew of Diana W. Jones but had not read much of her writing and was curious. Happily, this book was one of the best I have ever read. I love the way the book deals with time out of time, memory and the way things that have happened to a person seem to fade away, like a dream. Polly's memories are tantalizing and frightening at the same time. I particularly like the end of the novel, and cannot help but remark on Diana W. Jones use of the ballad itself to define her fantasy settings. I have read several retellings of Tam Lin and this is probably my favorite, next to that written by Pamela Dean.

Rating:
Summary: Dark and subtle, but not an easy read.
Review: I don't see why this is a young adult book, first of all, because there's no way the average, or even above average 14 year old is going to figure out what's going on. Most of the book is a puzzle to figure out what is really happening between Polly, the protagonist, and Thomas Lynn, the on-again off-again friend who takes their strange make-believe games much too seriously.

Polly, like Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) seems more like an icon of adolescence than a real person. Even when young, she doesn't think like a child. This works with the story, because she has a very odd role, so this is a minor complaint. Most of the characters and relationships are very well drawn. Ivy, Polly's grandmother, Reg, Fiona, and Nina are all interesting, well crafted characters. The plot moves along fast enough to keep the pages turning. Up until the last fifteen pages, I would have said this was an excellent book.

The main problem with the book is the ending. I wanted things wrapped up tidier, a little more 'Agatha Christie parlour room scene.' Instead, everything is torn apart in the climax, and not quite put back together again. She switches abruptly from a clear, well-described, mostly real-world scene to something vague and metaphysical. When the final problem is presented, Polly gives a crypic, "So that's what's happening, and I know how to fix it!" and then does things that, even two days later and after a second read through, make little sense. Instead of feeling grateful that I read an interesting story with fascinating characters, I feel resentful that I never figured out quite what happened, and probably never will.

Rating:
Summary: great book!
Review: I don't usually like to read fantasy book, but this one's really good. It has a good plot and I found that I couldn't put it down after the first few pages. I never heard of Tam Lin parable (?) before, so I don't think I got the full meaning/background of the story. All in all, it was a good read. Can anyone recommend other good DWJ books?

Rating:
Summary: Strange but Captivating
Review: I finally read this book after two years of hearing about it from different sources. I actually read it because of its correlation to the Tam Lin ballad. (By the way, you Tam Lin fans, read The Perilous Gard which is also based on this ballad but takes a very different approach). I began reading it the moment I woke up this morning and didn't put it down until I had finished reading it about a half hour ago! It's a tremendously fascinating story with a very intriguing main character. Polly seems to be lost for much of the book, and I ended up feeling like her while I was reading. The story builds, and in my opinion, grows stranger, more vague, and more complex with each page. By the end I was hoping for a well-reasoned explanation, but instead I was so confused and I still don't understand what happened. And I even know the story of the Tam Lin ballad. I still recommend this book to anyone who loves stories that makes the real and ordinary seem extraordinary. Also to all Tam Lin fans. I have never read any other Diana Wynn Jones books, because I am not usually a fan of fantasy, but this book was very thought-provoking.

Rating:
Summary: Not for easy solution seekers
Review: I finished this book last night at 1 a.m. and I am still dreaming about it. In fact, it is hard to tell what is dream and what reality in this highly original fantasy tale of Polly, a young girl barely surviving her parents' ugly divorce. She meets up with an entourage of fairy tale characters who are as human as they are fantastic-- to the point of engendering madness (hers and ours). As a part of a Halloween game invented by her quirky friend Nina, Polly walks right into a strange mansion, crashing the strangest of funerals, and making an unusual friend. Her life never quite holds together again as the two of them embark on the work of becoming heroes. What begins as a playful imaginary game slowly infuses with reality, as reality itself becomes less and less tangible. Every time I thought I was getting a handle on this book, it became more exasperatingly complicated and unbelievable. Yet I couldn't put it down. Is it great or is it bogus? I still can't fully answer that question. Perhaps it is more like a poem than a novel--a slippery bit of truth that you never quite get a handle on as it continually haunts you. Perhaps it's a map for finding the hero within us, a recipe for accessing that intuitive place which crosses our everyday reality, a challenge to rescue our lives from the constraints of expectation and convention and hold on fiercely to all that we love. Jones is a creative talent who is never fettered by these constraints. My favorite book by her is Charmed Life, which is best when preceded by The Lives of Christopher Chant. Up until now, I had never found another book of hers as good as thesetwo-- though I couldn't stop trying. Fire and Hemlock comes the closest.

P.S. Try to get a copy of Susan Cooper's version of Tam Lin at the library. It's short and lovely and will make your reading richer.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and haunting
Review: I had to give this book five stars, even though it isn't perfect. The plot is confusing at times, with holes that could have been filled in if the author had done some tweaking. Another drawback is that some of the best characters--like the quartet--tend to be given short shrift. Yet even with these drawbacks, a fantasy of this calibre is not likely to come along often enough so as to be taken for granted. Hence the five stars.

As I mentioned above, there are plot holes, but this is a side effect of the chief beauty of this book: its mystery. The story is set in our world--1980's England, to be exact--and the fantasy elements are laid on in subtle nuances of depth and detail. A slight otherworldly quality--almost too subtle to be detected--mars an otherwise commonplace funeral. Everyday events take on the significance of revelations. The magic itself is of the type that more often than not creeps at the edges of things, pervading the story with an atmosphere that is by turns haunting, fascinating, and occasionally hilarious.

With a deft hand the author weaves the ballad of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer together with the story a young girl, and soon enough the magic of legend and her mundane life intertwine. Polly is a "hero" in more than one sense: not only by virtue of her role as it is projected in the ballad, but also due to her struggles to cope with an increasingly unbearable living situation. It is not only the darkness of evil magic that Polly must eventually face, but also its everyday counterpart: the divorce and callous negligence of her parents.

The cast of characters and their relationships are wonderful, down to every last individual; it is their believability and richness that makes this book impossible to put down. There is also a refreshing realism in their interactions that plays a necessary counterpoint to the otherwise murky strangeness of the atmosphere. Children grow to adulthood as we watch them, their friendships and alliances change; the relationship between Polly and Tom Lynn grows ever more complex, undergoing constant shifts and adjustments.

You will find this book in the Young Adult section, but most readers of fantasy know that this is no reason to be put off. Diana Wynne Jones is one of the best YA fantasy writers around, and this is one of her darkest, deepest, and most complex books. You may need to reread it to fully understand what has happened by the somewhat bewildering conclusion--but if you enjoy it the first time, that should not be a chore, but a pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: Lovely blending of magic and reality
Review: I have loved this book for many years, and yes, I did have to read the ending a few times to understand what happened, but that is part of this author's way (the mysteriousness of the book is part of the mystery, and the mazelike, dreamlike quality is part of the style of this particular book). (I had to read the ending of this author's book Power of Three a few times too!) (And even in her "simpler" books, such as The Magicians of Caprona, almost nothing is quite what it appears to be!) Although I agree to some extent with other reviewers of this book (especially about the ending), my interpretation differs from theirs in some ways. For instance, I think that Polly sees Mr. Lynn most clearly when she is still very young (except that she thinks of him as being older than he is), and then again near the end when she has regained her missing memories. I think that when Polly is about fifteen, her "vision" of him is perhaps a little obscured by her own developing adolescent emotions etc., and that her views are least cluttered when she is youngest and most innocent. (Not everyone would agree, obviously.) To the person who asked if someone could explain what happened at the end: Yes, they did find a loophole, and the basic nature of the loophole was (a) that they had to pretend not to love each other in order to be allowed to be together and (b) that they already had loved each other for several years before that (love itself triumphs, etc.). It's more complex than just that, and I don't fully understand every detail of what, exactly, physically HAPPENED in the last several pages, but, symbolically, what was "happening" was that evil/darkness/etc. was being beaten at its own game, which did include several odd twists/reversals/etc. (Basically, they do love each other, but if they made it too obvious, Laurel would win. That is, more or less, what the ending is about --- and I really don't think that THAT aspect of it was meant to be unclear, or that the reader was meant to be quite AS confused as some readers evidently are. That they did find a loophole was, I'm certain, intended to be obvious. What exactly the loophole was, and why and how they found it, is, to some extent, left up to the reader to deduce. Personally, I find that aspect intriguing, rather than annoying, but again, not everyone would agree.) This book has so many layers that it would be almost impossible for anyone (including the author, perhaps?) to ever know everything about the many different aspects, multiple meanings, etc. For me, the mysterious quality only enhances the beauty and style of the book, and I really don't mind not always understanding everything, because I believe that (in this case, at least) that only means that there is so much more than meets the eye at first glance. Many more levels of meaning, many more possible interpretations, can be discovered during multiple readings. This is a book to be loved and appreciated many times and in many ways (like the great epic sagas of long ago). I recommend it highly for those who love to discover fascinating secrets about people (themselves included!) and about time, magic, memory and other related things. (Interestingly enough, the word "psyche" [used in "psychology" etc.] comes from the name of the heroine of the old myth about Cupid and Psyche, which is said to be the tale that inspired all the Beauty and the Beast tales [of which Tam Lin is one, being a variation on that theme].) Perhaps this is not necessarily a book for those who demand/require a simple, straightforward plot with few twists. But it will delight many who find the usual simple, straightforward plots TOO simple, TOO easy, TOO predictable --- especially if those readers also just happen to be amateur scholars of folklore! ^_^ (And, if you think Diana Wynne Jones's endings are hard to understand, just consider some of Alfred Hitchcock's most famous works! ^_~) (Personally, I prefer Diana Wynne Jones --- but to each his/her own! ^_~) For help in understanding Fire and Hemlock, try reading most of the books mentioned in it. They give a lot of clues as to what Diana Wynne Jones was thinking of when she wrote it. Also, try Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (both by Lewis Carroll) as an introduction to the world of peculiar upside-down logic and semi-logic as interpreted through fantasy. ^_^ Happy reading! ^_^ Kit =^__^= (avid reader since infancy, almost! ^_~) =^__^=