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Summary: one line summary
Review: Like someone above said it changes everytime you read it. The ending is VERY hard to get though and I only just got it lately, 4 years later. Try explaining it to someone who hasn't read it, it's impossible, so I'm not going to try.
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Summary: ending loophole
Review: many of the reviewers talk about the loophole ending. I've read several commentaries and one i agree with states that the ending (love and therefore goodness conqueres evil) was a loophole or a triviality because love doesn't always conquer, and if/when it does it isn't because it is love or because it should. And, evil people are sometimes hurt by thier own evil. Jones is very creative in F&H and is realistic in the ending she chose.
Rating: 
Summary: mediocre retelling of "Tam Lin"
Review: Normally I am a huge fan of Diana Wynne Jones (I enjoyed her Chrestomanci series, and I absolutely loved 'Dark Lord of Derkholm' and 'Howl's Moving Castle') but I just didn't find 'Fire and Hemlock' that enjoyable. Basically, it's a retelling of the old Tam Lin legend about a girl ("Polly") who saves her lover ("Tom Lynn") from being sacrificed by a mysterious otherworldly family (the Faerie Queen, represented here by the Leroy family). All the elements for a good story are there -- a strong heroine from a broken home, an assortment of quirky supporting characters, and the mysterious Mr. Lynn -- but the book just didn't resonate with me. If you like stories of this type (a mix of modern day life and fantasy), try Charles de Lint "Memory and Dream." If you're a Diana Wynne Jones fan or if you've never read her work before, I encourage you to look elsewhere; this book is not her best.
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Summary: Music and magic
Review: Okay, I confess - though I read much of Diana Wynne Jones's oeuvre in middle and junior high school, I'd almost forgotten about her books until I went into Harry withdrawal post-Goblet. How stupid of me - this is a wonderful writer whose books are definitely not just for kids. I now regularly search the racks whenever I wander into a bookstore (in other words, every few days) and was thrilled yesterday to find this title, which I hadn't read before.On to specifics - I'm not going to summarize, that's done adequately elsewhere - but to start with, I could not put this book down. I started reading it around 12:15 AM, thinking "I'll just read a few chapters, whet my appetite, then go to bed." Nice try. 420 pages later, it was 3 AM and I was quite tempted to read the whole thing again. Partly because of the writing, which is absorbing, idiomatic, and (for you fellow Americans) not so terribly British as to be noticeably odd (although I DID finally prove to my parents that yes, "busking" is a real word of British origin - for non-musicians, it means "playing on the street with your case open for money", basically, and other people DO do it). And that brings me to another reason I love it, the musical aspect. Besides being a manic bibliophile, I'm also a string quartet addict, so when Tom Lynn strikes out to form a quartet, I'm right there with him - one of the few things that makes life worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned. Those scenes rang true, as well, which doesn't always happen when a writer seeks to insert musical color, so kudos there. The fantasy and magic aspect isn't nearly as overt as in some of her other works - no moving castles, other worlds, or oddball wizards here - but is instead woven in gently, becoming more visible as the story progresses, until you realize it's been creeping up on you for a while. Eerily believable. Unusually, the book is almost all flashback - when we meet Polly Whittacker, she is 19 years old and getting ready to return to college for her second year, but most of the story takes place between her ages of 10 and 15. I like it - it's different, and getting all that back story in is not an easy task for a writer without letting all the seams show. When we finally arrive at the present, the pace rockets forward - the last 50 pages absolutely fly. Also unusually, things are not fully explained in the "Coda" - you have to work them out yourself to some extent. Hooray for a writer who doesn't feel she has to spoon-feed readers everything! And as a final aside, you could do a lot worse than to take the list of books Tom Lynn mails to Polly over the years and use it as a summer reading list, no matter how old you are. Diana Wynne Jones is my major (re)discovery of the year - good kids books are worthwhile at any age; they usually don't have swears or love scenes, but if it's well-written you neither need nor miss them, so don't be ashamed of picking up a book that may say "10 and up" or "young adult" on the cover. After all, "and up" means anything over.
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Summary: My favourite DWJ...
Review: One of Diana Wynne Jones' better books I think.
It's a story for adults, and oh how I wish she would concentrate on writing for the more grown-up audience. She has made what could otherwise have been a corny story about a girl trying to rescue 'the-man-she-loves' from 'the-snares-of-evil' into a somewhat psycological book about growing up, about coping with a rather dysfunctional family background - and portraying a very delicate friendship between a young girl and an older man. The way she mixes reality and myth in this book is fantastic, since it makes the myth seem more and more real the further you get into the story. As a foreigner I also found it fascinating, because I didn't know some of the stories she refers to in the book, and it forced me to read them afterwards, for which I am eternally grateful.
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Summary: What secrets lie in Polly's Past?
Review: Polly doesn't know why but she has two sets of memories. One is of a normal happy childhood, leading up to what looks to be a normal adulthood. But the other set is strange, hazy and filled with holes. And they all began when she was 10 and accidentally gate crashed s funeral. Here she met Mr. Tom Lynn, the black sheep of the Leroy family. Strangely enough the two start to become friends and create thrilling stories together. But soon strange things start to happen that a 10-year-old Polly cannot understand. The stories start to come real, or she just imagining it? In the next few years of her life Polly struggles to become a hero, while dealing with her parents divorce and her mother's emotional problems but things aren't quite right. What cost is connected to finding out the truth behind the mysterious Mr. Lynn. I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this book. The only other books I've read by Mrs. Wynne Jones have been the Chrestomanci Quartet, but this didn't look like the Harry Potter-like tales of Cat and others. Still, I picked this up (the main reason being it was one of the longest ones of hers on the shelf) and I was not disappointed. Fire and Hemlock is a much more mature story than Chrestomanci, filled with well developed, strange, and real characters. The story is a mystery more than a fantasy and well written as well. If you're a fan of the works of Diane Wynne Jones and mystery/fantasy hybrids read this book! The ending is beyond confusing but it's still very good.
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Summary: New Hero-Now Here-Where Now?-Nowhere... Four mysteries.
Review: Polly is an ordianry college student about to be married, and her life will be set on an inexorable track. But in her bedroom, days before Halloween, she remembers a book she has no recollection of buying was once different... And memories repressed by powers not so kind spin up to the surface.
At age ten, Polly had gate-crashed a funeral in the Leroy's house, a place that has a funeral every nine years on the same day... Halloween. One man, named Tom Lyyne, was befriended by her and together they started up an imaginary hero-business, with Mr. Lyyne the unsuspecting Mr. Piper who turned hero at odd moments, and Polly, a.k.a. Hero, his dashing assitant. But then their imaginary town of Stow-in-the-water is found... and a Mr. Piper who is nothing like Mr. Lyyne resides there.
Meanwhile, the Leroys are after Mr. Lyyne and are determined that Polly break her freindship with him. Strange accidents, from rampaging fire-like horses to beasts made of floating rubbish, follow their foot-steps, turning sane and logical at the last moment. Two worlds are overlapping, and them deadly deathless Laurel craves Mr. Lyyne's life to be back in her clutches. Unknown to Polly, if she doesn't do something, it may be Mr. Lyyne who is in the coffin on the ninth year at Leroy's house.
But Polly did something that she can't remember, and now Mr. Lyyne seems to have vansihed of the face of the earth, and people who have known him no longer remember him at all. Polly must recollect what was done, in time to catch the immortal Laurel's court, as they make way to another place, somewhere, yet nowhere at all.
This book is the masterpiece of a master author. Not for those who do not care to think, there are parts that you msut piece together as you read and when you are done. This book has a hint of legends, such as Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, but just a hint, which is refreshing after the way others stirng their books with myths till you feel sick. This book is lgiht, ethereal, and utterly in a league of its own throughout. If you are looking for a good read to occupy yourself with for a while, this book will not only do that, but more. All its parts are weighed with percision and this fascination story will fill your mind with its sheer beauty... if you let it. Not a tale for those unwilling to use their mind, buy it if you are prepared to enter a place that is always at the corner of our eyes, yet defiently not of the material world.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Best
Review: The book was certainly not Diana Wynne Jones' best work. I admit it was hard to follow and the ending seemed incomplete and poorly described. It seemed like a good plot, but it slowly digressed into a confusing mass of big words and weird age differences. My suggestion is save the seven bucks for coffee or if you're a die-hard Diana Wynne Jones fan, go to the library and check it out.
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Summary: Tam Lin & Thomas the Rhymer in Modern Britain.
Review: The cover is indeed terrible, but don't be put off. The editorial description (below) doesn't capture the essence of the book, but don't be put off. "A photograph called "Fire and Hemlock" that has been on the wall since her childhood. A story in a book of supernatural stories -- had Polly read it before under a different title? Polly, packing to return to college, is distracted by picture and story, clues from the past stirring memories. But why should she suddenly have memories that do not seem to correspond to the facts? Fire and Hemlock is an intricate, romantic fantasy filled with sorcery and intrigue, magic and mystery, all background to a most unusual and thoroughly satisfying love story." This is a retelling in modern guise of the stories of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer--musicians at the mercy of the Queen of the Dark Fairies (the Unseelie Court). Polly is 10 and lonely when she meets Tom Lynn, a cellist with the British Philharmonic Orchestra, on Halloween, when she and a friend dress as witches and dare each other to go by the local big, empty (haunted?) house. It appears that it ISN'T empty; a funeral is taking place. Tom Lynn is the ex-husband of one of the bereaved; he takes Polly outside to get away from the funeral, and they form a society of heroes-in-training. From there their friendship develops through letters, as Polly loves to make up imaginary worlds, and Tom likes to embellish the stories. The magical relationship develops slowly, as it seems that all Tom Lynn writes becomes true. As Polly grows toward adulthood, Tom becomes more enmeshed in the lives of the Leroys (the fairies), and it is up to Polly to pull him free. This is a fine novel. The charaterizations are excellent--Tom Lynn in particular. Jones doesn't make it a Disney fairy story (all the scary or hurtful parts cut out) but leaves the edges in. Diana Wynne Jones writes some books for the middle-school set (like the Chrestomanci quartet) and some young-adult books (the Dalemark Quartet, Dark Lord of Derkholm & Year of the Griffin). She is thus stuck in the kids/fantasy ghetto (like Ursula LeGuin). Under a different name, I think this would be reviewed with other magical realists. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Fascinating but Flawed
Review: The first 90% of the book was very well done and mixed reality and fantasy in an intriguing way. The murky "end of the story", however, was difficult to understand, leaving the reader wondering what had actually taken place, what the ending meant, and which (if any) of the numerous subplots had been concluded.
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