The book «Howl's Moving Castle» by Diana Wynne Jones is known mainly because of Hayao Miyazaki's anime of the same name. The book and the adaptation are not much alike, and it is not about the plot, but about the atmosphere and the accents. The difference is so great that I didn't have much trouble seeing them as two unrelated works.
Diana was born in London, the daughter of Marjorie (née Jackson) and Richard Aneurin Jones, both of whom were teachers. When war was announced, shortly after her fifth birthday, she was evacuated to Wales, and thereafter moved several times, including periods in Coniston Water, in York, and back in London. In 1943 her family finally settled in Thaxted, Essex, where her parents worked running an educational conference centre. There, Jones and her two younger sisters Isobel (later Professor Isobel Armstrong, the literary critic) and Ursula (later an actress and a children's writer) spent a childhood left chiefly to their own devices. After attending the Friends School Saffron Walden, she studied English at St Anne's College in Oxford, where she attended lectures by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien before graduating in 1956. In the same year she married John Burrow, a scholar of medieval literature, with whom she had three sons, Richard, Michael and Colin. After a brief period in London, in 1957 the couple returned to Oxford, where they stayed until moving to Bristol in 1976.
If Miyazaki's The Walking Castle is a dramatic, romantic, even sentimental work, then D. W. Jones's book is an adventure-adventure novel with fairy-tale motifs. In the tradition of Lewis Carroll, the events here unfold in a crazy kaleidoscope, so that by the time you figure out what's what, the denouement is coming. At the same time, the narrative atmosphere is understated, and the magical world in which we are immersed without much introduction is in no way emphasized by the surprise of the characters, but is part of the ordinary.
The characters are extremely ambiguous. They cannot be called "purely positive" or "role models," but they are revealed from different angles. Over the course of the novel, the characters change, but at the same time our perception of them changes. I will take Sophie's stepmother Fanny as an example. At first, thanks to Sophie's point of view, she seems quite pleasant, if somewhat pragmatic lady. She has arranged life for both her stepdaughters and her own without singling anyone out. Then, after the description of Sophie's life and especially highlighted - after the conversation with Martha, it seems that she is a selfish manipulator: "Mom knows very well: if you want to exploit someone, you do not have to treat him badly at all." And finally, after all the adventures, Sophie rethinks her attitude toward her stepmother: "Old age allowed her to look at Fanny in a whole new way. She saw before her a pretty young woman who was as bored at the hat shop as young Sophie was. But Fanny couldn't go anywhere, and she did the best she could, running the trade and raising the three girls, until Mr. Hutter died. And then she was suddenly frightened that she had become just like Sophie, an old woman whose life had no meaning or even any semblance of meaning." The difference in points of view forces the reader to turn on his head and evaluate the actions of the characters on his own. Especially since it is not clear until the very end who really is who.
Hints about the characters' characters are scattered throughout the book. It is generally worth reading carefully, because in spite of the chaotic narrative, each phrase has plot density and then can "play". While looking for quotes, I found an interesting parallel: "Sophie always thought she had as strong a will as Letty. And now it turns out that there are some things she can only do when there's no other way out." / "I'm just a coward! And if I was going to go for that horror, I should have convinced myself that I wouldn't do it!" Basically, this kind of reflection on the characters is what makes them "alive" in this fairy tale world.
«Howl's Moving Castle» is only the first part of the series. The next two books, "Air Castle" and "House of Character" are not "direct" sequels, but rather "spin-offs," branches where the action takes place in the same world, but with different characters. Sophie and Hole appear in each of them as secondary characters. Unfortunately, these books are not as impressive, mostly because the main characters are not as charismatic. So as not to multiply the reviews, I'll briefly discuss them here.
In "Air Castle," the action takes place in the East and at first is very reminiscent of "Aladdin." The main character, Abdullah, buys a magic carpet, meets Princess Flower-in-the-Night, and then she is kidnapped by an evil ifrit and he tries to save her. The story features a genie, a whole crowd of princesses of different ages and marital status, and again many of the characters turn out not to be who they seem. But even in the Oriental flavor, which includes the hero's incredible verbosity, flattering compliments, D. W. Jones maintains a British edge. Jones retains British restraint and inimitable irony.
I liked "The House with Character," or "The House of a Hundred Roads," less than the others. Actually, my main complaint is that the characters don't interact with each other. The main character Charmaine, unlike the other female characters in D. W. Jones, floats passively through the plot. And you can't say she has no character, rather it's directed toward reading some book. Escapism in its purest form. And yet she finds herself in a house with many rooms, riddles, and surprises. The rest of the story follows the old script: lots of rambling adventures, the characters turn out to be not who they look like, and in general everything is very fun and good natured.
Diana Wynne Jones has written a wonderful trilogy. Even though these books are considered children's literature, I think they can be read at any age. Because we all need a little fairy tale sometimes in life, a little faith that everything will end well.
This article was sponsored by Wayne Pierce
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