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Friday 5 December 2008

House of Many Ways

Magic and laundry

A mythical work

Magic and fantasy seem to occupy an odd tract of land in the world of the novel. Despite an honourable lineage that includes William Morris, Lord Dunsany and J. R. R. Tolkien, there persists a feeling that fantasy is really for children and geeks; it is not a serious art. Perhaps this is why publishers put out editions of Terry Pratchett and J. K. Rowling with more sophisticated cover art, so that their readers will not be embarrassed on trains.

Diana Wynne Jones was at Oxford in the days of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and learnt a great deal from them about the power and durability of myth (though not their Christian agenda — she is also free of Philip Pullman’s soapbox atheism). Some of her books are definitely for children, and some (such as The Dark Lord of Derkholm, her brilliant satire on fantasy cliché) for adults, but most, with a nominal target of ‘young adult’ — possibly to help booksellers — are for anyone who likes stories. The astonishing Fire and Hemlock, for example, uses the Odyssey and old balladry to tell a modern story of possessiveness poisoning love — which is also a story of a girl rescuing a man from a wicked fairy queen. Howl’s Moving Castle relates a magical battle between a wizard and a witch, and also tells how a commitment-phobic man and a girl with low self-esteem learn to love one another. (It was made into a film by Hayao Miyazaki, which looked quite beautiful but rather missed the point.) House of Many Ways is set in Howl’s world (Jones does not exactly do sequels, as each of her stories is self-contained, but she often takes a minor character in one story as a starting-point for another) and introduces a rather trying young woman called Charmain, who has such over-protective parents that she has grown up ignorant of the simplest practicalities of life. Any constant reader will find her coping mechanism familiar: ‘In this moment of despair, Charmain could only think of doing what she always did in a crisis: bury herself in a book.’ Between her ideal job of library-cataloguing and her actual one of house-sitting for a sick old relative, she deals with his inept apprentice, copes with striking kobolds and multiplying laundry, and helps Howl and his wife Sophie to save the day, throughout remaining credibly stubborn and unsympathetic.

This is one of Jones’ lighter works, but it is characteristically stylish and witty. Anyone who has struggled with a computer due to failing to read the manual will recognise Charmain’s consistent refusal to open the suitcase in which her uncle has left vital instructions. And it is hard not to sympathise with Sophie’s impulse to pick up a gold brick and brain the lisping, Bubbles-like child Twinkle with it.

Diana Wynne Jones has said that fantasy is an important mental function, a way of dealing with life. Or, on another level, this is a good story, told by one of the world’s most splendid storytellers.

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