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Fire and Hemlock
Polly has two sets of memories...
One is normal: school, home, friends. The other, stranger memories begin nine years ago, when she was ten and gate-crashed an odd funeral in the mansion near her grandmother's house. Polly's just beginning to recall the sometimes marvelous, sometimes frightening adventures she embarked on with Tom Lynn after that. And then she did something terrible, and everything changed.
But what did she do? Why can't she remember? Polly must uncover the secret, or her true love -- and perhaps Polly herself -- will be lost.
With an introduction by Garth Nix, and the text of "The Heroic Ideal—A Personal Odyssey," a speech by Diana Wynne Jones.
One is normal: school, home, friends. The other, stranger memories begin nine years ago, when she was ten and gate-crashed an odd funeral in the mansion near her grandmother's house. Polly's just beginning to recall the sometimes marvelous, sometimes frightening adventures she embarked on with Tom Lynn after that. And then she did something terrible, and everything changed.
But what did she do? Why can't she remember? Polly must uncover the secret, or her true love -- and perhaps Polly herself -- will be lost.
With an introduction by Garth Nix, and the text of "The Heroic Ideal—A Personal Odyssey," a speech by Diana Wynne Jones.
438 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Diana Wynne Jones
135 books11.4k followersDiana 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.
According to her autobiography, Jones decided she was an atheist when she was a child.
Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep my sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college. Beside the children, she felt harried by the crises of adults in the household: a sick husband, a mother-in-law, a sister, and a friend with daughter. Her first book was a novel for adults published by Macmillan in 1970, entitled Changeover. It originated as the British Empire was divesting colonies; she recalled in 2004 that it had "seemed like every month, we would hear that yet another small island or tiny country had been granted independence."Changeover is set in a fictional African colony during transition, and begins as a memo about the problem of how to "mark changeover" ceremonially is misunderstood to be about the threat of a terrorist named Mark Changeover. It is a farce with a large cast of characters, featuring government, police, and army bureaucracies; sex, politics, and news. In 1965, when Rhodesia declared independence unilaterally (one of the last colonies and not tiny), "I felt as if the book were coming true as I wrote it."
Jones' books range from amusing slapstick situations to sharp social observation (Changeover is both), to witty parody of literary forms. Foremost amongst the latter are The Tough Guide To Fantasyland, and its fictional companion-pieces Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) and Year of the Griffin (2000), which provide a merciless (though not unaffectionate) critique of formulaic sword-and-sorcery epics.
The Harry Potter books are frequently compared to the works of Diana Wynne Jones. Many of her earlier children's books were out of print in recent years, but have now been re-issued for the young audience whose interest in fantasy and reading was spurred by Harry Potter.
Jones' works are also compared to those of Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman. She was friends with both McKinley and Gaiman, and Jones and Gaiman are fans of each other's work; she dedicated her 1993 novel Hexwood to him after something he said in conversation inspired a key part of the plot. Gaiman had already dedicated his 1991 four-part comic book mini-series The Books of Magic to "four witches", of whom Jones was one.
For Charmed Life, the first Chrestomanci novel, Jones won the 1978 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime award by The Guardian newspaper that is judged by a panel of children's writers. Three times she was a commended runner-up[a] for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book: for Dogsbody (1975), Charmed Life (1977), and the fourth Chrestomanci book The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988). She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, children's section, in 1996 for The Crown of Dalemark.
According to her autobiography, Jones decided she was an atheist when she was a child.
Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep my sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college. Beside the children, she felt harried by the crises of adults in the household: a sick husband, a mother-in-law, a sister, and a friend with daughter. Her first book was a novel for adults published by Macmillan in 1970, entitled Changeover. It originated as the British Empire was divesting colonies; she recalled in 2004 that it had "seemed like every month, we would hear that yet another small island or tiny country had been granted independence."Changeover is set in a fictional African colony during transition, and begins as a memo about the problem of how to "mark changeover" ceremonially is misunderstood to be about the threat of a terrorist named Mark Changeover. It is a farce with a large cast of characters, featuring government, police, and army bureaucracies; sex, politics, and news. In 1965, when Rhodesia declared independence unilaterally (one of the last colonies and not tiny), "I felt as if the book were coming true as I wrote it."
Jones' books range from amusing slapstick situations to sharp social observation (Changeover is both), to witty parody of literary forms. Foremost amongst the latter are The Tough Guide To Fantasyland, and its fictional companion-pieces Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) and Year of the Griffin (2000), which provide a merciless (though not unaffectionate) critique of formulaic sword-and-sorcery epics.
The Harry Potter books are frequently compared to the works of Diana Wynne Jones. Many of her earlier children's books were out of print in recent years, but have now been re-issued for the young audience whose interest in fantasy and reading was spurred by Harry Potter.
Jones' works are also compared to those of Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman. She was friends with both McKinley and Gaiman, and Jones and Gaiman are fans of each other's work; she dedicated her 1993 novel Hexwood to him after something he said in conversation inspired a key part of the plot. Gaiman had already dedicated his 1991 four-part comic book mini-series The Books of Magic to "four witches", of whom Jones was one.
For Charmed Life, the first Chrestomanci novel, Jones won the 1978 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime award by The Guardian newspaper that is judged by a panel of children's writers. Three times she was a commended runner-up[a] for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book: for Dogsbody (1975), Charmed Life (1977), and the fourth Chrestomanci book The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988). She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, children's section, in 1996 for The Crown of Dalemark.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,066 reviews
July 4, 2022
In childhood, we view the world through a sort of a magical patina. The borders between fantasy and reality are a bit murky and porous, and really odd things can seamlessly coexist with reality. For most of us reality solidifies with age, but for some the strange magic remains very real because once upon a time they accidentally brushed up against the world that plays by some other rules.
At nineteen, Polly Whittaker suddenly realizes that she has a set of double memories. In one she has been living an ordinary life of the 1980s- school, friends, terrible and neglectful parents, a boyfriend even. In another, she has briefly intersected with a world of strangeness and adventures, menace and threat, all seemingly triggered by an unusual friendship with a strange cellist and a game of imaginary adventures that led to unforeseen consequences. In one set of memories, Polly is ordinary. In another, once upon a time she decided to train as a hero.
You may want to brush up on the ballads of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer early on to better enjoy the layers of allusion in this story, especially that ending that took a few frustrating rereads and a frantic buddy read discussion to make heads or tails out of it (and although frustrating, the difficulty of deciphering the details of what exactly happened was ultimately worth it for me).
It’s a lovely combination of magical and mundane, with the focus much stronger on the mundane which is nevertheless strangely fascinating. It’s the realism of the ordinary, of a young girl growing up into a decent human being with the complexity of emotions and experiences, pride and insecurities, strengths and vulnerabilities, often right and just as often wrong. Her friendship with Tom Lynn is intense and blossoms into intense adolescent crush, but the focus is on the rest of her life — navigating relationships, school fads and “crazes”, making new friends and outgrowing old friendships, discovering fondness for books, athletics and theater, dealing with neglectful parents, forming a bind with her grandmother, shaping herself into a full person by trial and error. The magical part of her life is just that — a small part, often peripheral, making her life and self have many other anchor points. She’s self-sufficient and well-equipped for life, our Polly, even if she’s by far not the ideal anything.
Oh yeah, and I would not have enjoyed it much as a kid. It may be about a young person, but i think you need to be a bit less young of a person to enjoy it. It’s quiet and often understated, and yet often surprisingly adult in the thoughtful, serious, subtle way.
4 solid stars.
————
Buddy read with Nastya.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
——————
Recommended by: Nastya
“She walked the other way, in an empty kind of horror. Real life, which yesterday had seemed safe and dullish and ordinary, was not real at all. It was a sham.”
At nineteen, Polly Whittaker suddenly realizes that she has a set of double memories. In one she has been living an ordinary life of the 1980s- school, friends, terrible and neglectful parents, a boyfriend even. In another, she has briefly intersected with a world of strangeness and adventures, menace and threat, all seemingly triggered by an unusual friendship with a strange cellist and a game of imaginary adventures that led to unforeseen consequences. In one set of memories, Polly is ordinary. In another, once upon a time she decided to train as a hero.
“[…] and she had a sudden sense, as she turned, that she was part of a transparent charmed pattern in which everything had to go in the one right way because that was the only way it could go.”
You may want to brush up on the ballads of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer early on to better enjoy the layers of allusion in this story, especially that ending that took a few frustrating rereads and a frantic buddy read discussion to make heads or tails out of it (and although frustrating, the difficulty of deciphering the details of what exactly happened was ultimately worth it for me).
“Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.”
It’s a lovely combination of magical and mundane, with the focus much stronger on the mundane which is nevertheless strangely fascinating. It’s the realism of the ordinary, of a young girl growing up into a decent human being with the complexity of emotions and experiences, pride and insecurities, strengths and vulnerabilities, often right and just as often wrong. Her friendship with Tom Lynn is intense and blossoms into intense adolescent crush, but the focus is on the rest of her life — navigating relationships, school fads and “crazes”, making new friends and outgrowing old friendships, discovering fondness for books, athletics and theater, dealing with neglectful parents, forming a bind with her grandmother, shaping herself into a full person by trial and error. The magical part of her life is just that — a small part, often peripheral, making her life and self have many other anchor points. She’s self-sufficient and well-equipped for life, our Polly, even if she’s by far not the ideal anything.
Oh yeah, and I would not have enjoyed it much as a kid. It may be about a young person, but i think you need to be a bit less young of a person to enjoy it. It’s quiet and often understated, and yet often surprisingly adult in the thoughtful, serious, subtle way.
4 solid stars.
————
Buddy read with Nastya.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
——————
Recommended by: Nastya
September 28, 2007
(Pre-1985-) Dianna Wynne Jones is my absolute favorite writer of all time. Since I've gotten this far with cataloguing much of my reading history, I had to make sure this fact is recorded here somewhere. I actually haven't read this one -- my favorite -- in years, mostly because I'm terrified I'll discover it can no longer do for me anything like what it did when I was a kid.
I really wish I could read anything now that would give me the kind of experience I had as a child reading Ms. Jones's books. Somewhere she has an essay or an interview where she talks about the difference between writing for kids and writing for adults. What she says is that you don't have to explain every little thing to kids the way you do to grownups, because they just intuitively understand the unwritten logic of the world you're describing, which I really think is true. It's because she exploits this that her books are so amazing: they hook into some kind of childhood mental processes and content, so that much of the story doesn't need to be written, and is actually being told in collaboration with the wee, developing mind on a much more vivid and intensely personal level than would be possible just from reading a regular book, if that makes any sense... I guess as you get older, all that fluid, multicolored, unlimited swirly stuff in the immature brain dries up, and whatever's left gets dammed and filtered into these confining narrow, crusty little channels. I can't engage with fiction at all the way I did when I was a kid, which is the chief reason why I don't read much anymore, now that I'm grown. Now I sit there and think, "Here I am, reading this book," or "This book is well-written," or "that doesn't seem plausible." How deeply unsatisfying is *that*?
Dianna Wynne Jones's best books follow one brilliant pattern, which I'm not really going to get into here except to say that the endings are always the same: huge, chaotic, messy implosions in which the characters, time, space, and a thousand different worlds all reach some frenetic pitch and then collapse in on themselves with a hugely satisfying crash. Hooray! When I was younger, my dream was to travel to England in an effort to meet Dianna Wynne Jones. I sort of let go of that dream, though, when I realized I couldn't think of anything to say. Maybe now I could tell her: "Oh, screw Harry Potter!" And then I could thank her.
Thank you, Ms. Jones!
I really wish I could read anything now that would give me the kind of experience I had as a child reading Ms. Jones's books. Somewhere she has an essay or an interview where she talks about the difference between writing for kids and writing for adults. What she says is that you don't have to explain every little thing to kids the way you do to grownups, because they just intuitively understand the unwritten logic of the world you're describing, which I really think is true. It's because she exploits this that her books are so amazing: they hook into some kind of childhood mental processes and content, so that much of the story doesn't need to be written, and is actually being told in collaboration with the wee, developing mind on a much more vivid and intensely personal level than would be possible just from reading a regular book, if that makes any sense... I guess as you get older, all that fluid, multicolored, unlimited swirly stuff in the immature brain dries up, and whatever's left gets dammed and filtered into these confining narrow, crusty little channels. I can't engage with fiction at all the way I did when I was a kid, which is the chief reason why I don't read much anymore, now that I'm grown. Now I sit there and think, "Here I am, reading this book," or "This book is well-written," or "that doesn't seem plausible." How deeply unsatisfying is *that*?
Dianna Wynne Jones's best books follow one brilliant pattern, which I'm not really going to get into here except to say that the endings are always the same: huge, chaotic, messy implosions in which the characters, time, space, and a thousand different worlds all reach some frenetic pitch and then collapse in on themselves with a hugely satisfying crash. Hooray! When I was younger, my dream was to travel to England in an effort to meet Dianna Wynne Jones. I sort of let go of that dream, though, when I realized I couldn't think of anything to say. Maybe now I could tell her: "Oh, screw Harry Potter!" And then I could thank her.
Thank you, Ms. Jones!
May 24, 2019
Polly is a capable young woman who has lived a completely ordinary life. Or so she thinks, until one day she's cleaning out her old bedroom and starts to remember - in great detail; it takes up most of the book - a different life, a second set of memories revolving around a somewhat older man, Thomas Lynn, who had been her friend while she was a child, and with whom she shared some very strange, otherworldly experiences. Polly realized , but something happened and she forgot she ever knew him, until these old memories were triggered. Had these memories been erased from Polly's mind? How, and why?
I'm really torn about this one. It's a modern fantasy that's a retelling of Tam Lin, which ordinarily is like literary catnip for me, but it just didn't particularly grab me: Thomas Lynn was kind of bland and rather old for our heroine. Polly spent too much of the book as a pre-teen and young teen (ages 10-16, with a sudden leap to age 19 at the very end), and the ending was abrupt and kind of confusing. I thought it was a solid 3-star read, no question.
But then I read some Goodreads reviews from people who love this novel (though there are plenty of others who felt like me). And then I found Diana Wynn Jones' essay explaining all of the different ideas and mythologies woven into the plot - seriously, the list includes T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets - and it's clear this novel is a lot more layered and complex than I initially gave it credit for. And I love layered and complex. So I'm going to reread the last part of this book and reevaluate my feelings and my initial rating. Stay tuned!
ETA: I reread the ending. Maybe 3.5 stars? I'm still having trouble feeling the love for this book. The vastly ugly painting of the main characters on the cover of my paperback isn't helping, at all. These are supposed to be attractive people! And Tom, who is supposed to be in his early 20's, looks like he's in his 50's. Because of that I had put Tom firmly in the father figure category, and ultimately that's not where he's supposed to be, but my imaginary view of Tom is proved quite difficult to shift. Sometime I'll read this entire book again. BECAUSE I WANT TO FEEL THE LOVE, DANGIT.
I'm really torn about this one. It's a modern fantasy that's a retelling of Tam Lin, which ordinarily is like literary catnip for me, but it just didn't particularly grab me: Thomas Lynn was kind of bland and rather old for our heroine. Polly spent too much of the book as a pre-teen and young teen (ages 10-16, with a sudden leap to age 19 at the very end), and the ending was abrupt and kind of confusing. I thought it was a solid 3-star read, no question.
But then I read some Goodreads reviews from people who love this novel (though there are plenty of others who felt like me). And then I found Diana Wynn Jones' essay explaining all of the different ideas and mythologies woven into the plot - seriously, the list includes T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets - and it's clear this novel is a lot more layered and complex than I initially gave it credit for. And I love layered and complex. So I'm going to reread the last part of this book and reevaluate my feelings and my initial rating. Stay tuned!
ETA: I reread the ending. Maybe 3.5 stars? I'm still having trouble feeling the love for this book. The vastly ugly painting of the main characters on the cover of my paperback isn't helping, at all. These are supposed to be attractive people! And Tom, who is supposed to be in his early 20's, looks like he's in his 50's. Because of that I had put Tom firmly in the father figure category, and ultimately that's not where he's supposed to be, but my imaginary view of Tom is proved quite difficult to shift. Sometime I'll read this entire book again. BECAUSE I WANT TO FEEL THE LOVE, DANGIT.
December 21, 2021
I had a lot of fun reading Fire and Hemlock, and if you like DWJ, don’t miss it. I won’t review it, but I’d like to make a reading guide that will allow me to remember how things work. The mechanics are not simple, but the book doesn’t need the exposure of its guts to be enjoyed. Except perhaps for the ending. That bit is confusing.
For DWJ's thoughts on her book, read her essay on heroics in Fire & Hemlock. I rehash lots of what she says there.
Let’s start with the underlying myths: 1) Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, 2)Hero and Leander, and 3) Cupid and Psyche.
Those three myths give how the plot should be read on the emotional level. It is a story of a female Hero in a personal relationship. Tam Lin gives the basic plot: a previous attachment to the Queen of the Fairies, solved by holding on to true love.
Cupid and Psyche suggest that the Hero will commit a fault. Like in the myth, it’s spying (unlike in Tam Lin, where holding on too much is encouraged), and must afterwards seek her beloved. It introduces the theme of the seeker. Tom has Cupid’s attributes (think the bow from the cello and his deficient eyesight) and shows Laurel as Venus, the powerful source of his gifts. It’s also important to understand that, like Cupid’s allegory of profane and divine love, Polly’s journey is that of locating in herself the heroic bits and living up to their standard. That’s essentially why she can never withdraw what she says at the end, despite a priori being free from Laurel’s influence. It would mean the failure of her heroic journey.
The story of Hero and Leander gives the rhythm of Tom and Polly’s relationship: they meet time and time again but are each time separated, and it suggests that he must go to hell at the end, and that she’ll follow him there. One is reminded of the myth of Orpheus, another musician, who must seek his beloved in Hades, and loses her due to lack of patience. But the timing is off: he’s the musician, but she’s the seeker, and the fault is earlier in the plot and thus was already committed when the lovers are in hell. It's completely different to go to hell for your sins than to stay there, being previously innocent. Here, her betrayal frees him. Orpheus doesn’t give plot points, but we recognize the common theme.
The structure and tone are from 1)The Odyssey, 2) TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, 3)1001 Nights.
The Odyssey gives its structure as heroic travel told in flashbacks. It also goes back to the hell theme- Odysseus must go to Hades after leaving Circe, the witch-goddess who murdered her husband. Of course, Laurel is a witch goddess who murders husbands.
TS Eliot is the underlying music that is either turned up or down when DWJ needs it. It gives the garden, the pond, the string quartet, and the final wordplay. It also gives the literal key to the resolution and the general obsession with the passage of time. It's the most obvious source of the tone.
Lastly, 1001 nights introduces the idea of storytelling as lifesaving mean, the blur between reality and imagination (of which Eliot says “human kind/ Cannot bear much reality.”), and the idea that the female character is fated to save the male character. That appears also in Tam Lin. It's so problematic that you better throw in the weight of as many myths as possible to make it more palatable.
By now it should be obvious that Fire & Hemlock strongly relies on trinities. First, the trinity of the setting, based on the permutations of “here” and “now” from the vases. It may seem complicated, but I think this is what DWJ wanted to talk about: imagination, story telling, story weaving.
- The “here-now”, where Tom is an adult cellist and Polly is a child who reads books and has friends.
- The “nowhere”, where Lauren rules and where the train leads. It’s clearly reminiscent of hell, including the persephonic episode where Polly refuses to eat and drink.
- The “where now?”, inhabited by Hero, Tan Could, Tan Audel, Tan Hanivar and Tan Thare, the giant, the ironmonger, and everything they imagine together.
Each setting is build in with the others like interlocking spirals.
There are also triunvirates of characters. The one of the “here-now” is deceptively important. Fire and Hemlock is, unlike many fantasies, a book of personal relationships. The characterizations of Polly’s friends is given much attention. We have Nina (the dumb one), Polly at the center, and Fiona (the clever one). We also have the trinity of ages: Granny (wisdom), Ivy (couch potato) and Polly (the seeker)
Ivy is the "here-now" Laurel. They are similar in Laurel’s mistrust of imagination- Tom is punished with having what he imagines become true and come back to bite him. That's how he becomes True Thomas; unlike Thomas the Rhymer, who was true without threats. Laurel confuses facts and fiction at will. It’s also what Ivy does. Again, the blur between reality and imagination is a major theme. Polly's father and his partner, who have outed imagination from their life, serve that purpose too. And of course, their names also bind them together: Laurel is the latin name of the bay leaf.
The triad Laurel/Ivy/Polly has the interest of not only evoking the old idea of maiden/mature woman/crone, but of being very close to a particular celebrated triple goddess, that composed of Persephone, Demeter and Hekate. The parallels are obvious: Persephone travels between worlds, Demeter is perpetually abandoned, Hekate is the goddess of witchcraft. Despite her rigged gifts, Laurel does keep her bargains, and that’s why Polly starts opportunely to remember her "where now?" life. Her pact with Laurel was to forget, but she was to be left alone, and Laurel can’t keep her part because of Seb and Leroy.
And so, Laurel is the queen of the fairies, Venus, Circe, Calypso, Hades, Hekate, all of whom similar archetypes. But who is Polly? Diana filled her book with so much subtext that the main character must constantly switch roles. And hence the name Polly, “many”. She is the crucible for all of DWJ's intertextual plays. Tom? Cupid, Tam Lin, but I'd argue he's mainly Thomas the Rhymer, as the name says.
Thomas the Rhymer shares many plot points. The queen of the fairies in the ballad shows him the way to three lands (heaven, hell and home), the theme of eating in hell is revisited, as is the ability to return home from fairyland, and truth is essential to be able to walk one of those roads. Thomas was a prophet; and that's one reason why Tom always seems to know so much more than Polly.
And boom! One way to understand the ending is right there: (1) Like Thomas the Rhymer, who is given the choice between prophecy and the harp, Thomas must be true to walk the way back home. That implies giving up the cello, giving up imagination (the horse, a common metaphor), and also giving up Polly (he must be true to Laurel too in order to fulfill his contract).
And so we have come to the ending. There's one interpreation above, but don't worry, there's many more. This is also how it can be understood:
(2). As the literal illustration of Eliot.
“To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.[...]
And where you are is where you are not.”
She’s in nowhere: she must apply the poem and do the opposite of what she should do, that’s to say, holding on. But that, in the novel, is based on the knowledge of the internal logic of another work (the Quartets) and is too unsatisfying an ending for a story with emotional resonance. I understand that bit of the Quarters as a meditation on change and how it integrates in time: it's as surprised as any mathematician by our ability to go from 0 to 1 and to be in 0 until we are in 1. Although great poetry, I don't think that it can really be applied to Fire and Hemlock, because it goes in any case from 1 to 0 and because we are at the climax of the novel, where a reflection on change (a theme that is present, of course, in the measure that it is a YA novel, but not really dominant) would blend badly with the heroic background. Myths never change; Ulysses, Cupid, even Psyche, learn but don't change. So I do think that DWJ took the chance to use the poem as a literal guide, but only as an in-joke.
Let’s look at it a bit more, using now a narrative key and not a literary one:
(3) We see just what we already knew: that Laurel rigs her games. The same way that she inverted her gift to Thomas, she builds a duel based on weakness. The less you have, the more you win. Thomas doesn’t understand it in time (though Ann does) and Polly must strip him of what he has. That works within the walls of the novel, but is less interesting in itself. Unless maybe we think that he does gather his inner strength once he has abandoned the props, and, as the epigraph to Eliot says,
“The way upward and the way downward are the same.”
That is a moral way to understand the ending. Do I think it's the one we should chose? Honestly, no. I don't think DWJ is as big on fables as she is on myths. I think we should seek the key to our ending in a way that it resolves the problem between blurring reality and imagination and Polly's heroic journey, both of which stand at the heart of the novel. Change and inner strenght do not. And I don't find in the book any clue to Tom gathering his inner strenght once Polly betrays him: he just goes and wins.
(4) Or we can stick to following the lines of the narration, but blame the fact that he sinks not on the duel itself but on his original gift from Laurel, that always turns what he summons against him. Read that way, Tom's lucky not to have brought Polly on his behalf, because Leroy might have called on Laurel herself. But I'm not sure how to interpret the rules of the duel in that light. Why set rules at all? It seems redundant.
(5) Another way to see it would be with the pond as an allegory of imagination: the cello, Laurel's gift (personified in the horse) and Polly bring Tom closer to it, but if he disappears in there he can never come back to the "here now" (artist's descent into madness, etc.) I find I like this interpretation because I think it correlates nicely with real life and with the themes of the novel: Tom's struggles and strength must be focused on his job (music), his relationship (Polly), and his hobbies (storytelling), but if he goes in them to deep he loses his foothold on reality. That's a real problem directly deriving from his strenghts; hence the rules of the duel. His gift goes against him because it is a gift from a goddess, never one to make the person that receives it less special or less genius-y.
The ways I find to understand the ending are not entirely integrable but they don't need to be. And it could be interesting to seek a different way of understanding the ending for every set of rules: the ones of the where-now, the nowhere and the here-now, but that's a job for another day.
And do Tom and Polly end up together, despite the fact that she has to keep meaning what she said? Sure. It just means that she has to keep loving Tom enough to let him go, or she’ll lose him. It’s the same curse under which any sane relationship operates.
You see, I like the ballad of Tam Lin. Janet is awesome. But it is the story of a woman pregnant by a married man (unhappily married to the Queen of the Fairies, but still) holding on to him despite him being horrible to her (he turns into monsters. Uuuh.). That accounts for the fact that the Queen gets the ominous last words in the Ballad: there can never be a happy ending in store for Janet and Tam Lin on those premises. That’s also why Tam Lin is such a handy ballad to invert.
DWJ knows that, and she introduces a prop: the Fairy King. In other words, the Queen cheated too! Leroy is the way out for Tom because he hurt him, both textually in the duel and in the context of the ballad. If he hadn’t, Tom couldn’t be a moral hero and Polly couldn’t operate the crucial change from holding on to letting go. And Tom is a moral hero; that’s the meaning of him saying “I did my best” at the end, and the interest of the character of Leslie, who has no morals and serves as a counterpoint.
And how exactly does Polly rejects Tom? She tells him the exact truth; and that’s important, because their relationship previously had been based on fusing reality and imagination. DWJ has already said with Ivy and Laurel that that won’t work. At the end of the book, they leave the “nowhere” and the “here now?” and start to live in reality. That’s why book-reading fades away from the narration when Polly grows into adulthood.
And thus Diana says: storytime is over, the book is ending and we have to go back to real life; keep your facts straight, and go beyond holding on to not clinging. But she never goes so far as to write that down; she hardly ever writes anything important explicitly. That frequently makes it seem like she abuses of deus ex machina, even when she doesn't, but it helps understanding her stories on a more intuitive level. I do think that Fire & Hemlock is satisfactorily ended.
For DWJ's thoughts on her book, read her essay on heroics in Fire & Hemlock. I rehash lots of what she says there.
Let’s start with the underlying myths: 1) Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, 2)Hero and Leander, and 3) Cupid and Psyche.
Those three myths give how the plot should be read on the emotional level. It is a story of a female Hero in a personal relationship. Tam Lin gives the basic plot: a previous attachment to the Queen of the Fairies, solved by holding on to true love.
Cupid and Psyche suggest that the Hero will commit a fault. Like in the myth, it’s spying (unlike in Tam Lin, where holding on too much is encouraged), and must afterwards seek her beloved. It introduces the theme of the seeker. Tom has Cupid’s attributes (think the bow from the cello and his deficient eyesight) and shows Laurel as Venus, the powerful source of his gifts. It’s also important to understand that, like Cupid’s allegory of profane and divine love, Polly’s journey is that of locating in herself the heroic bits and living up to their standard. That’s essentially why she can never withdraw what she says at the end, despite a priori being free from Laurel’s influence. It would mean the failure of her heroic journey.
The story of Hero and Leander gives the rhythm of Tom and Polly’s relationship: they meet time and time again but are each time separated, and it suggests that he must go to hell at the end, and that she’ll follow him there. One is reminded of the myth of Orpheus, another musician, who must seek his beloved in Hades, and loses her due to lack of patience. But the timing is off: he’s the musician, but she’s the seeker, and the fault is earlier in the plot and thus was already committed when the lovers are in hell. It's completely different to go to hell for your sins than to stay there, being previously innocent. Here, her betrayal frees him. Orpheus doesn’t give plot points, but we recognize the common theme.
The structure and tone are from 1)The Odyssey, 2) TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, 3)1001 Nights.
The Odyssey gives its structure as heroic travel told in flashbacks. It also goes back to the hell theme- Odysseus must go to Hades after leaving Circe, the witch-goddess who murdered her husband. Of course, Laurel is a witch goddess who murders husbands.
TS Eliot is the underlying music that is either turned up or down when DWJ needs it. It gives the garden, the pond, the string quartet, and the final wordplay. It also gives the literal key to the resolution and the general obsession with the passage of time. It's the most obvious source of the tone.
Lastly, 1001 nights introduces the idea of storytelling as lifesaving mean, the blur between reality and imagination (of which Eliot says “human kind/ Cannot bear much reality.”), and the idea that the female character is fated to save the male character. That appears also in Tam Lin. It's so problematic that you better throw in the weight of as many myths as possible to make it more palatable.
By now it should be obvious that Fire & Hemlock strongly relies on trinities. First, the trinity of the setting, based on the permutations of “here” and “now” from the vases. It may seem complicated, but I think this is what DWJ wanted to talk about: imagination, story telling, story weaving.
- The “here-now”, where Tom is an adult cellist and Polly is a child who reads books and has friends.
- The “nowhere”, where Lauren rules and where the train leads. It’s clearly reminiscent of hell, including the persephonic episode where Polly refuses to eat and drink.
- The “where now?”, inhabited by Hero, Tan Could, Tan Audel, Tan Hanivar and Tan Thare, the giant, the ironmonger, and everything they imagine together.
Each setting is build in with the others like interlocking spirals.
There are also triunvirates of characters. The one of the “here-now” is deceptively important. Fire and Hemlock is, unlike many fantasies, a book of personal relationships. The characterizations of Polly’s friends is given much attention. We have Nina (the dumb one), Polly at the center, and Fiona (the clever one). We also have the trinity of ages: Granny (wisdom), Ivy (couch potato) and Polly (the seeker)
Ivy is the "here-now" Laurel. They are similar in Laurel’s mistrust of imagination- Tom is punished with having what he imagines become true and come back to bite him. That's how he becomes True Thomas; unlike Thomas the Rhymer, who was true without threats. Laurel confuses facts and fiction at will. It’s also what Ivy does. Again, the blur between reality and imagination is a major theme. Polly's father and his partner, who have outed imagination from their life, serve that purpose too. And of course, their names also bind them together: Laurel is the latin name of the bay leaf.
The triad Laurel/Ivy/Polly has the interest of not only evoking the old idea of maiden/mature woman/crone, but of being very close to a particular celebrated triple goddess, that composed of Persephone, Demeter and Hekate. The parallels are obvious: Persephone travels between worlds, Demeter is perpetually abandoned, Hekate is the goddess of witchcraft. Despite her rigged gifts, Laurel does keep her bargains, and that’s why Polly starts opportunely to remember her "where now?" life. Her pact with Laurel was to forget, but she was to be left alone, and Laurel can’t keep her part because of Seb and Leroy.
And so, Laurel is the queen of the fairies, Venus, Circe, Calypso, Hades, Hekate, all of whom similar archetypes. But who is Polly? Diana filled her book with so much subtext that the main character must constantly switch roles. And hence the name Polly, “many”. She is the crucible for all of DWJ's intertextual plays. Tom? Cupid, Tam Lin, but I'd argue he's mainly Thomas the Rhymer, as the name says.
Thomas the Rhymer shares many plot points. The queen of the fairies in the ballad shows him the way to three lands (heaven, hell and home), the theme of eating in hell is revisited, as is the ability to return home from fairyland, and truth is essential to be able to walk one of those roads. Thomas was a prophet; and that's one reason why Tom always seems to know so much more than Polly.
And boom! One way to understand the ending is right there: (1) Like Thomas the Rhymer, who is given the choice between prophecy and the harp, Thomas must be true to walk the way back home. That implies giving up the cello, giving up imagination (the horse, a common metaphor), and also giving up Polly (he must be true to Laurel too in order to fulfill his contract).
And so we have come to the ending. There's one interpreation above, but don't worry, there's many more. This is also how it can be understood:
(2). As the literal illustration of Eliot.
“To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.[...]
And where you are is where you are not.”
She’s in nowhere: she must apply the poem and do the opposite of what she should do, that’s to say, holding on. But that, in the novel, is based on the knowledge of the internal logic of another work (the Quartets) and is too unsatisfying an ending for a story with emotional resonance. I understand that bit of the Quarters as a meditation on change and how it integrates in time: it's as surprised as any mathematician by our ability to go from 0 to 1 and to be in 0 until we are in 1. Although great poetry, I don't think that it can really be applied to Fire and Hemlock, because it goes in any case from 1 to 0 and because we are at the climax of the novel, where a reflection on change (a theme that is present, of course, in the measure that it is a YA novel, but not really dominant) would blend badly with the heroic background. Myths never change; Ulysses, Cupid, even Psyche, learn but don't change. So I do think that DWJ took the chance to use the poem as a literal guide, but only as an in-joke.
Let’s look at it a bit more, using now a narrative key and not a literary one:
(3) We see just what we already knew: that Laurel rigs her games. The same way that she inverted her gift to Thomas, she builds a duel based on weakness. The less you have, the more you win. Thomas doesn’t understand it in time (though Ann does) and Polly must strip him of what he has. That works within the walls of the novel, but is less interesting in itself. Unless maybe we think that he does gather his inner strength once he has abandoned the props, and, as the epigraph to Eliot says,
“The way upward and the way downward are the same.”
That is a moral way to understand the ending. Do I think it's the one we should chose? Honestly, no. I don't think DWJ is as big on fables as she is on myths. I think we should seek the key to our ending in a way that it resolves the problem between blurring reality and imagination and Polly's heroic journey, both of which stand at the heart of the novel. Change and inner strenght do not. And I don't find in the book any clue to Tom gathering his inner strenght once Polly betrays him: he just goes and wins.
(4) Or we can stick to following the lines of the narration, but blame the fact that he sinks not on the duel itself but on his original gift from Laurel, that always turns what he summons against him. Read that way, Tom's lucky not to have brought Polly on his behalf, because Leroy might have called on Laurel herself. But I'm not sure how to interpret the rules of the duel in that light. Why set rules at all? It seems redundant.
(5) Another way to see it would be with the pond as an allegory of imagination: the cello, Laurel's gift (personified in the horse) and Polly bring Tom closer to it, but if he disappears in there he can never come back to the "here now" (artist's descent into madness, etc.) I find I like this interpretation because I think it correlates nicely with real life and with the themes of the novel: Tom's struggles and strength must be focused on his job (music), his relationship (Polly), and his hobbies (storytelling), but if he goes in them to deep he loses his foothold on reality. That's a real problem directly deriving from his strenghts; hence the rules of the duel. His gift goes against him because it is a gift from a goddess, never one to make the person that receives it less special or less genius-y.
The ways I find to understand the ending are not entirely integrable but they don't need to be. And it could be interesting to seek a different way of understanding the ending for every set of rules: the ones of the where-now, the nowhere and the here-now, but that's a job for another day.
And do Tom and Polly end up together, despite the fact that she has to keep meaning what she said? Sure. It just means that she has to keep loving Tom enough to let him go, or she’ll lose him. It’s the same curse under which any sane relationship operates.
You see, I like the ballad of Tam Lin. Janet is awesome. But it is the story of a woman pregnant by a married man (unhappily married to the Queen of the Fairies, but still) holding on to him despite him being horrible to her (he turns into monsters. Uuuh.). That accounts for the fact that the Queen gets the ominous last words in the Ballad: there can never be a happy ending in store for Janet and Tam Lin on those premises. That’s also why Tam Lin is such a handy ballad to invert.
DWJ knows that, and she introduces a prop: the Fairy King. In other words, the Queen cheated too! Leroy is the way out for Tom because he hurt him, both textually in the duel and in the context of the ballad. If he hadn’t, Tom couldn’t be a moral hero and Polly couldn’t operate the crucial change from holding on to letting go. And Tom is a moral hero; that’s the meaning of him saying “I did my best” at the end, and the interest of the character of Leslie, who has no morals and serves as a counterpoint.
And how exactly does Polly rejects Tom? She tells him the exact truth; and that’s important, because their relationship previously had been based on fusing reality and imagination. DWJ has already said with Ivy and Laurel that that won’t work. At the end of the book, they leave the “nowhere” and the “here now?” and start to live in reality. That’s why book-reading fades away from the narration when Polly grows into adulthood.
And thus Diana says: storytime is over, the book is ending and we have to go back to real life; keep your facts straight, and go beyond holding on to not clinging. But she never goes so far as to write that down; she hardly ever writes anything important explicitly. That frequently makes it seem like she abuses of deus ex machina, even when she doesn't, but it helps understanding her stories on a more intuitive level. I do think that Fire & Hemlock is satisfactorily ended.
September 11, 2019
This book is wonderful! It's a cool remix of two old fairy stories in an 80s setting. It's also a coming of age story about a girl Polly who gets pulled into some magical drama because of a dude she meets when she accidentally crashes a funeral. If it's magic at all? There's a great tension around whether anything is really going on.
It's also a story about surviving bad families. Polly's parents are haunting, great characters with depth that change in little ways.
My one real negative is that one thing that didn't feel right was the romance. I like a good romance. In this one, there's an age difference that never feels quite right. I'm not sure how it landed at the time, but it felt pretty creepy to me in the here and now. Like plot wise it made enough sense but other than that, hm. Maybe if Polly had started the book much older? It definitely would feel very creepy in a book today! It isn't written to sound creepy. Yeah. I dunno about all that.
Anyways. Some of the scenes with Polly and her family will really stick with me.
It's one of those books that after reading it I was suddenly aware of some of its rippling influence (especially The Bone Clocks).
Looking forward to reading a LOT more by Diana Wynn Jones! What are your favorites?
It's also a story about surviving bad families. Polly's parents are haunting, great characters with depth that change in little ways.
My one real negative is that one thing that didn't feel right was the romance. I like a good romance. In this one, there's an age difference that never feels quite right. I'm not sure how it landed at the time, but it felt pretty creepy to me in the here and now. Like plot wise it made enough sense but other than that, hm. Maybe if Polly had started the book much older? It definitely would feel very creepy in a book today! It isn't written to sound creepy. Yeah. I dunno about all that.
Anyways. Some of the scenes with Polly and her family will really stick with me.
It's one of those books that after reading it I was suddenly aware of some of its rippling influence (especially The Bone Clocks).
Looking forward to reading a LOT more by Diana Wynn Jones! What are your favorites?
September 18, 2021
synopsis: a young girl becomes a brave hero who rescues a forlorn gentleman in distress.
judging from reviews, this is apparently DWJ's most challenging novel. whether it is the layers of references to myths and folk songs, the hallucinogenic final battle, a potentially uncomfortable scenario in which a 10 year old girl finds a connection with a grown man and later falls in love with him, or even the surprisingly casual, minor note quality of the ending... many readers find this to be a confusing and disappointing experience. all of that sounded fascinating to me, especially after loving the Chrestomanci series. and so I dove in, ready to be wonderfully perplexed by the strangeness of it all...
synopsis: in 80s London, a child grows up and a man gets a life.
...and yet this was not a discombobulating experience for me, nor a disturbing one. DWJ has that enviable skill of being able to weave the magical with the mundane in a way that does not take a reader out of the book, but further in. into the realism of the relationships, into the ambiguous magic that comes out of nowhere. Polly Whittacker is an admirable character and also a completely normal human being, as often wrong as she is right, full of pride and insecurities, acting exactly how I could see myself acting at her age. Polly's admiration for Thomas Lynn becomes an intense, one-sided crush, but one of the great things about this book is how it shows the reader Polly's whole world, not just that part of her: we live with her family & friends & how she grows up & how she deals with untrustworthy parents & how she forms her identity & how she views herself and the world around her. Thomas is only a part of that world, sometimes the most important part, but more often not. and the same is true for Thomas. Polly is very important to him but Polly is not his whole world. they may be each other's spur to move forward, but neither is the other's reason for being. nor is the upper crust world of icy villain Laurel - complete with sinister Faerie Court and literally mind-bending magic - remotely Polly's world, so she sees them through her own mortal perspective. which made the hallucinatory ending where Tom is enmeshed in a magical confrontation fairly straightforward to me...
synopsis: a sidekick is mentored by a hero; together they have adventures. in time, the hero himself needs rescuing by his former sidekick, now a hero.
...the battle is won because Polly lets it all go. Laurel has made it clear that the rules are both basic and reversed. Tom can only draw on what is truly his, his own physical self; and his many strengths will be as weaknesses. and so Tom can rely on no one but himself, he can receive no aid; his skills and belongings are of no help; Polly herself must renounce him so that he can survive. faeries are tricky! fortunately, Polly understands the phrase "If you love someone, set them free" - and perhaps its second half as well, "if they come back to you, it was meant to be.” and so Tom wins, because of Polly. and so Tom comes back to her, at first in a very dramatic way but finally, at the very end, in a very nonchalant and realistic way as well. the danger is over, they are back in their world that is both banal and magical. I wonder if Polly will even end up with Tom. that's also a part of the magic of this book: Tom will always be a very important person in her life, her first mentor and her first crush, but she doesn't need to be with him to love him, she doesn't even need to be in love with him to love him. my money is on Polly ending up with Leslie.
synopsis: The Faerie Queen enchants a musician; to his rescue comes a mere mortal, crossing space and time and all the spells cast against her, armed only with her courage, her memories, and the sensible advice of her grandmother.
my edition includes an essay by the author on The Heroic Ideal and how that ideal impacted her own growth, and how she used it to layer different heroic odysseys and heroic templates into this realistic, contemporary story of a young girl growing up. the essay is fascinating and after reading it, I was even more impressed by the book. but not because of those layers and subtleties and symbols. rather, because her story is understandable and resonant and completely absorbing without even knowing how loaded the story is with mythopoeic meaning. I did love learning all about how complex this novel truly is, how intricate its construction. but in the end, I don't need to know all about the different pieces of a person's history or about their inspirations in order to appreciate a person. or a book! the complexity and the care taken in creating Fire and Hemlock is readily apparent, without explanation.
judging from reviews, this is apparently DWJ's most challenging novel. whether it is the layers of references to myths and folk songs, the hallucinogenic final battle, a potentially uncomfortable scenario in which a 10 year old girl finds a connection with a grown man and later falls in love with him, or even the surprisingly casual, minor note quality of the ending... many readers find this to be a confusing and disappointing experience. all of that sounded fascinating to me, especially after loving the Chrestomanci series. and so I dove in, ready to be wonderfully perplexed by the strangeness of it all...
synopsis: in 80s London, a child grows up and a man gets a life.
...and yet this was not a discombobulating experience for me, nor a disturbing one. DWJ has that enviable skill of being able to weave the magical with the mundane in a way that does not take a reader out of the book, but further in. into the realism of the relationships, into the ambiguous magic that comes out of nowhere. Polly Whittacker is an admirable character and also a completely normal human being, as often wrong as she is right, full of pride and insecurities, acting exactly how I could see myself acting at her age. Polly's admiration for Thomas Lynn becomes an intense, one-sided crush, but one of the great things about this book is how it shows the reader Polly's whole world, not just that part of her: we live with her family & friends & how she grows up & how she deals with untrustworthy parents & how she forms her identity & how she views herself and the world around her. Thomas is only a part of that world, sometimes the most important part, but more often not. and the same is true for Thomas. Polly is very important to him but Polly is not his whole world. they may be each other's spur to move forward, but neither is the other's reason for being. nor is the upper crust world of icy villain Laurel - complete with sinister Faerie Court and literally mind-bending magic - remotely Polly's world, so she sees them through her own mortal perspective. which made the hallucinatory ending where Tom is enmeshed in a magical confrontation fairly straightforward to me...
synopsis: a sidekick is mentored by a hero; together they have adventures. in time, the hero himself needs rescuing by his former sidekick, now a hero.
...the battle is won because Polly lets it all go. Laurel has made it clear that the rules are both basic and reversed. Tom can only draw on what is truly his, his own physical self; and his many strengths will be as weaknesses. and so Tom can rely on no one but himself, he can receive no aid; his skills and belongings are of no help; Polly herself must renounce him so that he can survive. faeries are tricky! fortunately, Polly understands the phrase "If you love someone, set them free" - and perhaps its second half as well, "if they come back to you, it was meant to be.” and so Tom wins, because of Polly. and so Tom comes back to her, at first in a very dramatic way but finally, at the very end, in a very nonchalant and realistic way as well. the danger is over, they are back in their world that is both banal and magical. I wonder if Polly will even end up with Tom. that's also a part of the magic of this book: Tom will always be a very important person in her life, her first mentor and her first crush, but she doesn't need to be with him to love him, she doesn't even need to be in love with him to love him. my money is on Polly ending up with Leslie.
synopsis: The Faerie Queen enchants a musician; to his rescue comes a mere mortal, crossing space and time and all the spells cast against her, armed only with her courage, her memories, and the sensible advice of her grandmother.
my edition includes an essay by the author on The Heroic Ideal and how that ideal impacted her own growth, and how she used it to layer different heroic odysseys and heroic templates into this realistic, contemporary story of a young girl growing up. the essay is fascinating and after reading it, I was even more impressed by the book. but not because of those layers and subtleties and symbols. rather, because her story is understandable and resonant and completely absorbing without even knowing how loaded the story is with mythopoeic meaning. I did love learning all about how complex this novel truly is, how intricate its construction. but in the end, I don't need to know all about the different pieces of a person's history or about their inspirations in order to appreciate a person. or a book! the complexity and the care taken in creating Fire and Hemlock is readily apparent, without explanation.
October 2, 2011
When I tried to think of a way to describe this book I kept having a GIF go through my head. One that I'd seen recently and felt summed up this novel perfectly:
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This novel is just so... damn uncomfortable. It's hard to pinpoint why it reminds me of two androgenous ballet dancers having a suspended representational sex/dance off while a Japanese man humps his way to oblivion, some things are just beyond the realm of human expression.
The easy answer would be to yell, "Pervert!" and run screaming into the distance, qwoping all the way. But it's not entirely that because Tom (a divorcee) and Polly (a ten year old girl who grows up as the story progresses) don't actually have a romance. At least, it's entirely one-sided for most the vast majority of the novel.
Still, their friendship is uncomfortably coloured by the constant reminder that, yes, these two are going to be a couple.
It's Wynne Jones, so naturally the writing is nothing to cry poor about. There is this rich, disjointed, mythical feel to the writing, even though it's set in a modernish time-setting.
The characters were great but none of them were ever truly lovable. Even the ones who were meant to be lovable. In fact, the likable characters were some of the least fleshed-out characters in this book.
Over all, it's a good book. I can't say that I'd ever read it again or remember it as fondly as I'll remember Howl's Moving Castle, but it's still a good book.
[image error]
This novel is just so... damn uncomfortable. It's hard to pinpoint why it reminds me of two androgenous ballet dancers having a suspended representational sex/dance off while a Japanese man humps his way to oblivion, some things are just beyond the realm of human expression.
The easy answer would be to yell, "Pervert!" and run screaming into the distance, qwoping all the way. But it's not entirely that because Tom (a divorcee) and Polly (a ten year old girl who grows up as the story progresses) don't actually have a romance. At least, it's entirely one-sided for most the vast majority of the novel.
Still, their friendship is uncomfortably coloured by the constant reminder that, yes, these two are going to be a couple.
It's Wynne Jones, so naturally the writing is nothing to cry poor about. There is this rich, disjointed, mythical feel to the writing, even though it's set in a modernish time-setting.
The characters were great but none of them were ever truly lovable. Even the ones who were meant to be lovable. In fact, the likable characters were some of the least fleshed-out characters in this book.
Over all, it's a good book. I can't say that I'd ever read it again or remember it as fondly as I'll remember Howl's Moving Castle, but it's still a good book.
February 2, 2022
The first time I read this book, I was intrigued by the beginning, bored by the middle and confused by the ending. By the time we hit that ambiguousness, I just lost my concentration and energy and was not willing to pay the careful attention it required. But I knew I wanted to return to it. And so here I am.
This is a coming of age story of Polly, the New Hero, an ordinary English girl. This is a retelling of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer. This is Polly's Odyssey, her journey that requires bravery but also being smart and creative. This book is about a very mundane growing up from childhood into young adulthood, but with the magical always there.
I don’t remember the last time I was so undecided about a book. While I see its failings, and I really don’t think the pacing and love story always worked, this book beguiled me. When I’m thinking about it, I have this very distinct feeling. And I guess this means it’s a special book.
I still think that ending was unnecessarily overcomplicated, DWJ was being too smart for her own good, using T. S. Eliot's modernist poetry for her inspiration. Was it satisfying? Yes and no, but it was fascinating and I had a blast deciphering it with my buddy, Nataliya.
This is a coming of age story of Polly, the New Hero, an ordinary English girl. This is a retelling of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer. This is Polly's Odyssey, her journey that requires bravery but also being smart and creative. This book is about a very mundane growing up from childhood into young adulthood, but with the magical always there.
I don’t remember the last time I was so undecided about a book. While I see its failings, and I really don’t think the pacing and love story always worked, this book beguiled me. When I’m thinking about it, I have this very distinct feeling. And I guess this means it’s a special book.
I still think that ending was unnecessarily overcomplicated, DWJ was being too smart for her own good, using T. S. Eliot's modernist poetry for her inspiration. Was it satisfying? Yes and no, but it was fascinating and I had a blast deciphering it with my buddy, Nataliya.
August 4, 2018
Fire and Hemlock is one of Diana Wynne Jones’ more haunting books, with characters, situations and references that linger long after a first reading. It’s well known that the plot outline is taken from Northern ballads recounting the stories of Young Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, especially as she heads each chapter with quotes from the ballads and refers explicitly to the tales in her text. The tales of a young man lured to the Otherworld by a fairy, and in the case of Tam Lin then rescued by a young woman, are purloined and brought into the 20th century, along with a heady mix of The Golden Bough and a whole host of other plots and characters. Thomas Lynn is the young man, Laurel his fairy queen and young Polly (whom we follow from just before she starts secondary education to when she is in her first year at Oxford) is Tom’s apparent saviour. We also get to meet Polly’s dysfunctional family, her grandmother and her school friends, along with Tom’s associates, both human and otherworldly.
The novel succeeds on a human level, largely because it seems to have a autobiographical flavour to it: Polly, like Jones, is drawn to books even though her parents largely disapprove, and like Jones, is able to create other realities through the power of story. Jones’ book references, quite apart from their relevance to the plot (as when Tom insists that Polly reads the book on fairy tales he has sent her), must be a good indicator of Diana's own childhood and adult reading matter. Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is one of the first mentioned (published in 1962, not too long before Jones embarked on her own writing career and which may have been an inspiration); then there's some E Nesbit stories, Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers of course, and tales of King Arthur (a running theme in many of Diana's books, most obviously in The Merlin Conspiracy and Hexwood). Another long-recognised influence on Fire and Hemlock is T S Eliot’s Four Quartets, principally the images and structure, though many of Jones’ potential young adult readership would remain less aware of this (as I was, until it was pointed out to me).
There are so many avenues to explore in this tantalising novel, but I will begin by thinking about the significance of names. I'll start with the fairy who seduces the Tom Lin character, Laurel (or, to give her the names she has in the Will reading which takes place early in the novel, Eudora Mabel Lorelei Perry Lynn Leroy). Eudora ("good, excellent gift") was one of the Greek sea nymphs, but perhaps the name is used rather ironically here, as is Mabel (from French aimable, "loveable"). Lorelei of course is the siren of the Rhine, a literary creation apparently, a river nymph who ensnared passing males. Perry, probably originally of Welsh origin (ap Hari, son of Harry), here is probably a reference to peri, an exotic alternative name for a fairy. Lynn of course was her married name, while Leroy is the surname of her new husband, Morton; Leroy is from French le roi, the king, referring to Seb's father as an Oberon type of Fairy King. (The other father-figure in Polly's life is her own weak-willed dad Reg, whose name also harks back to Latin rex, regis "king". It's all rather Golden Bough, isn't it? Jones of course dwells on this at length later the the book.)
Lorelei naturally got anglicised as Laurel. The bay laurel is used in cooking, but it is advisable not to eat the whole leaves as they can damage internal organs, so I suppose this is appropriate for Polly's adversary. Another bane of Polly's life is her mother Ivy, poison perhaps by name and certainly poison by nature, though this being Britain (where there is no poison ivy) the smothering nature of the parasitic ivy is what is being alluded to. Another little etymological puzzle, the enigmatic Mary Fields: what's her role? She is of course a natural rival for Tom's affections with Polly Whittacker (= "white acre").
The novel has three locations, London, Oxford and Bristol, all three of which are places where DWJ lived and which reflect on the part-autobiographical nature of Fire and Hemlock. Somewhere in the middle of this triangle must be Middleton (hence its name, perhaps). Nearby Stow-on-the-Water is a mash-up of two real places in the Cotswolds, Bourton-on-the-Water (a largish village, characterised by lots of pedestrian bridges over the river and presumably liable to flooding) and Stow-on-the-Wold (which exactly matches up with the description of the fictional Stow except the market cross is more recent than the Saxon period). In Jones’ fictional England topography and atmosphere are similar to but not the same as the real England of the mid-80s, and are her attempt to transfer the world of the Scottish Border ballads to the southern Britain that she knew well.
Oxford gets a relatively short space in the novel; while Jones went to St Anne's College, Polly in the novel goes to St Margaret's. St Margaret's is the novel's version of the real-life Lady Margaret Hall (another college founded for women students), and this college's coat-of-arms is instructive. First of all it features a portcullis (the gate features in the incident in a Ghost Castle at the fair), and secondly the motto is Souvent me souviens ("I often remember"), highly appropriate for one of the overarching themes of the novel. Possibly coincidentally there is an early years school in Headington, Oxford called Hunsdon House, which may have inspired Laurel’s supernatural mansion: did Diana's children attend this school when she lived there?
Like many others I've had to reread the ending quite a few times and, yes, it is very obscure what has actually happened, and how. Polly realises that the only way she can save Tom from dying is to lose him, but somehow she and Tom are together in the final chapter. I can only surmise that we have to add together the two insights that Polly gives us: (1) Tom has been using her to try to save himself from his fate; and (2) Polly says she doesn't want to see him again. In a way nearly everybody is using somebody else (even Polly’s Granny, who has been trying to find out what happened to her own loved one in the past), and also in a way, we all use others, strangers as well as friends; the point being that we put others first before ourselves if we truly love them. When Polly declares she doesn't want to see Tom again, presumably she means the selfish Tom who tried to save himself, whom we contrast with Polly who is prepared to give up her happiness to save Tom.
Jones’ lovely wordplays on Now and Here and Nowhere, which we first meet on stone vases in the grounds of Hundon House, are clearly a facet of Jones’ favourite themes of parallel worlds and existences, related in this case to the different paths referenced in the ballads. This may be easier to fathom than the book’s title. Commentaries have pointed out the significances of these two story elements: fire standing for life, in particular creative energy, hemlock standing for death, the two representing the quick (the living) and the dead. In the finale hemlock plants are described as growing next to the pool, the portal to death. Jones spent some of her childhood years in Wales, so she would have been familiar with the Welsh word tân, which means "fire". Hence the hero names of the members of the quartet (which of themselves seem otherwise quite arbitrary). So some of the underlying symbolism (the flooding in Stow, the depressing rainy British weather, the ripples of the Hunsdon House pool) can be seen as reflecting the antithesis of the literary and creative sparks that Polly and her friends exhibit. Perhaps the Tam Lin of the ballads reminded Jones of Welsh tân 'fire' and Welsh llyn 'lake' and from these she took her cues.
The use of musical terms in the novel might help in interpreting the ending. Fire and Hemlock really is about the power of words to change reality, and Jones, like many another fantasy-writer, also uses words to subvert what passes for reality. So, though Eliot's Four Quartets poems are implicitly referred to, and Tom is part of a string quartet in Fire and Hemlock, the addition of a fifth player, Polly, is what changes the dynamics of everything. That is reflected in the divisions of the book: four parts (like the movements of a string quartet composition) but with the addition of a tail-piece, the Coda, an envoi to the work. This coda is Polly herself, and it marks the real division in her life, from being the tomboy (I use the word deliberately) that Tom has used for his own purposes to the young woman who has shouldered the responsibilities of being an adult.
The choice of words for tempi in the different parts is very deliberate. Allegro vivace: both words mean 'lively', with allegro also implying brisk/quick; this is Fire as Life. Andante cantabile: at a walking pace (not slow, really) but also sung (there's a lot here about the books Tom sends Polly, including The Oxford Book of Ballads). Allegro con fuoco: 'with fire'; how more explicit can Jones be? The third movement, traditionally a rather sedate minuet, morphed into a faster more playful scherzo by the 19th century, but here it has morphed even more. Presto molto agitato: final movements were invariably very fast, and so this part of the book urgently rushes like a headstrong horse to its climactic scene at Hunsdon House.
A coda is something tagged on, and in music it is usually the final section of a movement. In this novel it stands outside the formal scheme, a fifth not-movement. Marked scherzando, its musical meaning ('playful') refers also to Jones' intention for this section: it is a play on words, a pun, a joke (this is what scherzo literally translates as in Italian). She is trying to say that at the last Polly's words are a verbal sleight-of-hand, a word-magician's way of misdirecting Laurel as to her real intentions. And like any good magician Jones doesn't quite reveal how she has done the trick.
The novel succeeds on a human level, largely because it seems to have a autobiographical flavour to it: Polly, like Jones, is drawn to books even though her parents largely disapprove, and like Jones, is able to create other realities through the power of story. Jones’ book references, quite apart from their relevance to the plot (as when Tom insists that Polly reads the book on fairy tales he has sent her), must be a good indicator of Diana's own childhood and adult reading matter. Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is one of the first mentioned (published in 1962, not too long before Jones embarked on her own writing career and which may have been an inspiration); then there's some E Nesbit stories, Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers of course, and tales of King Arthur (a running theme in many of Diana's books, most obviously in The Merlin Conspiracy and Hexwood). Another long-recognised influence on Fire and Hemlock is T S Eliot’s Four Quartets, principally the images and structure, though many of Jones’ potential young adult readership would remain less aware of this (as I was, until it was pointed out to me).
There are so many avenues to explore in this tantalising novel, but I will begin by thinking about the significance of names. I'll start with the fairy who seduces the Tom Lin character, Laurel (or, to give her the names she has in the Will reading which takes place early in the novel, Eudora Mabel Lorelei Perry Lynn Leroy). Eudora ("good, excellent gift") was one of the Greek sea nymphs, but perhaps the name is used rather ironically here, as is Mabel (from French aimable, "loveable"). Lorelei of course is the siren of the Rhine, a literary creation apparently, a river nymph who ensnared passing males. Perry, probably originally of Welsh origin (ap Hari, son of Harry), here is probably a reference to peri, an exotic alternative name for a fairy. Lynn of course was her married name, while Leroy is the surname of her new husband, Morton; Leroy is from French le roi, the king, referring to Seb's father as an Oberon type of Fairy King. (The other father-figure in Polly's life is her own weak-willed dad Reg, whose name also harks back to Latin rex, regis "king". It's all rather Golden Bough, isn't it? Jones of course dwells on this at length later the the book.)
Lorelei naturally got anglicised as Laurel. The bay laurel is used in cooking, but it is advisable not to eat the whole leaves as they can damage internal organs, so I suppose this is appropriate for Polly's adversary. Another bane of Polly's life is her mother Ivy, poison perhaps by name and certainly poison by nature, though this being Britain (where there is no poison ivy) the smothering nature of the parasitic ivy is what is being alluded to. Another little etymological puzzle, the enigmatic Mary Fields: what's her role? She is of course a natural rival for Tom's affections with Polly Whittacker (= "white acre").
The novel has three locations, London, Oxford and Bristol, all three of which are places where DWJ lived and which reflect on the part-autobiographical nature of Fire and Hemlock. Somewhere in the middle of this triangle must be Middleton (hence its name, perhaps). Nearby Stow-on-the-Water is a mash-up of two real places in the Cotswolds, Bourton-on-the-Water (a largish village, characterised by lots of pedestrian bridges over the river and presumably liable to flooding) and Stow-on-the-Wold (which exactly matches up with the description of the fictional Stow except the market cross is more recent than the Saxon period). In Jones’ fictional England topography and atmosphere are similar to but not the same as the real England of the mid-80s, and are her attempt to transfer the world of the Scottish Border ballads to the southern Britain that she knew well.
Oxford gets a relatively short space in the novel; while Jones went to St Anne's College, Polly in the novel goes to St Margaret's. St Margaret's is the novel's version of the real-life Lady Margaret Hall (another college founded for women students), and this college's coat-of-arms is instructive. First of all it features a portcullis (the gate features in the incident in a Ghost Castle at the fair), and secondly the motto is Souvent me souviens ("I often remember"), highly appropriate for one of the overarching themes of the novel. Possibly coincidentally there is an early years school in Headington, Oxford called Hunsdon House, which may have inspired Laurel’s supernatural mansion: did Diana's children attend this school when she lived there?
Like many others I've had to reread the ending quite a few times and, yes, it is very obscure what has actually happened, and how. Polly realises that the only way she can save Tom from dying is to lose him, but somehow she and Tom are together in the final chapter. I can only surmise that we have to add together the two insights that Polly gives us: (1) Tom has been using her to try to save himself from his fate; and (2) Polly says she doesn't want to see him again. In a way nearly everybody is using somebody else (even Polly’s Granny, who has been trying to find out what happened to her own loved one in the past), and also in a way, we all use others, strangers as well as friends; the point being that we put others first before ourselves if we truly love them. When Polly declares she doesn't want to see Tom again, presumably she means the selfish Tom who tried to save himself, whom we contrast with Polly who is prepared to give up her happiness to save Tom.
Jones’ lovely wordplays on Now and Here and Nowhere, which we first meet on stone vases in the grounds of Hundon House, are clearly a facet of Jones’ favourite themes of parallel worlds and existences, related in this case to the different paths referenced in the ballads. This may be easier to fathom than the book’s title. Commentaries have pointed out the significances of these two story elements: fire standing for life, in particular creative energy, hemlock standing for death, the two representing the quick (the living) and the dead. In the finale hemlock plants are described as growing next to the pool, the portal to death. Jones spent some of her childhood years in Wales, so she would have been familiar with the Welsh word tân, which means "fire". Hence the hero names of the members of the quartet (which of themselves seem otherwise quite arbitrary). So some of the underlying symbolism (the flooding in Stow, the depressing rainy British weather, the ripples of the Hunsdon House pool) can be seen as reflecting the antithesis of the literary and creative sparks that Polly and her friends exhibit. Perhaps the Tam Lin of the ballads reminded Jones of Welsh tân 'fire' and Welsh llyn 'lake' and from these she took her cues.
The use of musical terms in the novel might help in interpreting the ending. Fire and Hemlock really is about the power of words to change reality, and Jones, like many another fantasy-writer, also uses words to subvert what passes for reality. So, though Eliot's Four Quartets poems are implicitly referred to, and Tom is part of a string quartet in Fire and Hemlock, the addition of a fifth player, Polly, is what changes the dynamics of everything. That is reflected in the divisions of the book: four parts (like the movements of a string quartet composition) but with the addition of a tail-piece, the Coda, an envoi to the work. This coda is Polly herself, and it marks the real division in her life, from being the tomboy (I use the word deliberately) that Tom has used for his own purposes to the young woman who has shouldered the responsibilities of being an adult.
The choice of words for tempi in the different parts is very deliberate. Allegro vivace: both words mean 'lively', with allegro also implying brisk/quick; this is Fire as Life. Andante cantabile: at a walking pace (not slow, really) but also sung (there's a lot here about the books Tom sends Polly, including The Oxford Book of Ballads). Allegro con fuoco: 'with fire'; how more explicit can Jones be? The third movement, traditionally a rather sedate minuet, morphed into a faster more playful scherzo by the 19th century, but here it has morphed even more. Presto molto agitato: final movements were invariably very fast, and so this part of the book urgently rushes like a headstrong horse to its climactic scene at Hunsdon House.
A coda is something tagged on, and in music it is usually the final section of a movement. In this novel it stands outside the formal scheme, a fifth not-movement. Marked scherzando, its musical meaning ('playful') refers also to Jones' intention for this section: it is a play on words, a pun, a joke (this is what scherzo literally translates as in Italian). She is trying to say that at the last Polly's words are a verbal sleight-of-hand, a word-magician's way of misdirecting Laurel as to her real intentions. And like any good magician Jones doesn't quite reveal how she has done the trick.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 14, 2013
One of the best and most incomprehensible books I've ever laid my eyes on. It makes my heart ache, physically, literally, it's so good it hurts. My long long LONG time favourite, Howl's Moving Castle, became a runner-up after I finished with Fire and Hemlock. It just really messes with my insides. I want to be this book.
Right after finishing the book I was just really frustrated – the ending made my face screw and I just had to throw the book god-knows-where (I'm sorry, Tom, the poor book was probably in great agony for the whole night) and curse myself to sleep. I went through such a load of feelings and emotions throughout the book, and in the end I felt like the tension was never truly released. Which makes this book, in my eyes, both unbearable and genius. In a way it reminds me of Laird Koenig's The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane in that it makes you absolutely fall in love with the characters and you wish them all the best yet you can never be certain whether they got their happy ending because there's an eternal cliffhanger (don't we have a law against those?). Only this was a great, enormous load better.
I was trembling by the time I got to part four. Like literally shaking all over and desperate.
Now, despite the fact I've loved DWJ for years I've only read the Castle series and the Chrestomanci series before because I only recently got my hands on some other books of hers. But I'm kind of glad I only read it now. It's quite clear Fire and Hemlock is more mature compared to her more kiddie-ish novels. Much longer, much more complex and detailed, and much more relationship driven. I'm not saying kids couldn't enjoy it – I certainly would have, had I read it when I was younger – but personally, I think I benefitted from the perspective my age gave me over Polly's growth and character development.
I loved Tom Lynn, and his relationship to Polly. I loved how incomplete and selfish Tom's feelings and motives towards Polly turned out to be. And how – in the end – perfectly and devotedly Polly still loved him. I loved the way Polly grew to him and good god! The frustration! I mean, I'm okay with age differences and lolita-ish material in literature (because, you know, fictional characters, no harm done) but this was so different from anything else I'd read! It wasn't just a few years, which would have made it into sweet little puppy love, which is cute. It wasn't exactly a perverse, unhealthy, unbalanced pedoesque "relationship", which would have made it interesting in a dark, sad way.
No, it was too gentle, too okay, and too realistic for me to bear. It just felt like they were meant to go through all those stages and all those feelings. It was clear from the beginning there was going to be a romance between those two, but there was never anything wrong about it. Tom was always reasonable about it (except for the SILKEN BACK SMUT oh my god the scolding he gave her! The lady doth protest too much...) and Polly had the right to be a little unreasonable because, well, she was young and in a way very naïve. And I can't seem to go on about this subject, because my heart feels like it's about to break. Yes, I was utterly touched by their relationship and uh oh yeah alright. Wow. I just really don't get it why so many people saw it somehow creepy or gross, because there was never anything truly inappropriate going on, at least from Tom's side. It was just beautiful and so true and so desperately touching I almost lost it.
Overall, I think Fire and Hemlock was one of the most rereadable books I've read, even compared to Diana's other novels which I've always loved rereading because I've felt like there's always something I didn't catch last time. This book was like Diana multiplied by ten. And after I felt like I really understood the ending, it became even better. It's just what I call absolute literary perfection. The essay at the end of the newest edition was also perfect. I felt like I was going to faint whilst reading it because of all the little details Diana included to sculpt it into absolute flawlessness.
This book is mint. I want to give it way more than five stars.
Right after finishing the book I was just really frustrated – the ending made my face screw and I just had to throw the book god-knows-where (I'm sorry, Tom, the poor book was probably in great agony for the whole night) and curse myself to sleep. I went through such a load of feelings and emotions throughout the book, and in the end I felt like the tension was never truly released. Which makes this book, in my eyes, both unbearable and genius. In a way it reminds me of Laird Koenig's The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane in that it makes you absolutely fall in love with the characters and you wish them all the best yet you can never be certain whether they got their happy ending because there's an eternal cliffhanger (don't we have a law against those?). Only this was a great, enormous load better.
I was trembling by the time I got to part four. Like literally shaking all over and desperate.
Now, despite the fact I've loved DWJ for years I've only read the Castle series and the Chrestomanci series before because I only recently got my hands on some other books of hers. But I'm kind of glad I only read it now. It's quite clear Fire and Hemlock is more mature compared to her more kiddie-ish novels. Much longer, much more complex and detailed, and much more relationship driven. I'm not saying kids couldn't enjoy it – I certainly would have, had I read it when I was younger – but personally, I think I benefitted from the perspective my age gave me over Polly's growth and character development.
I loved Tom Lynn, and his relationship to Polly. I loved how incomplete and selfish Tom's feelings and motives towards Polly turned out to be. And how – in the end – perfectly and devotedly Polly still loved him. I loved the way Polly grew to him and good god! The frustration! I mean, I'm okay with age differences and lolita-ish material in literature (because, you know, fictional characters, no harm done) but this was so different from anything else I'd read! It wasn't just a few years, which would have made it into sweet little puppy love, which is cute. It wasn't exactly a perverse, unhealthy, unbalanced pedoesque "relationship", which would have made it interesting in a dark, sad way.
No, it was too gentle, too okay, and too realistic for me to bear. It just felt like they were meant to go through all those stages and all those feelings. It was clear from the beginning there was going to be a romance between those two, but there was never anything wrong about it. Tom was always reasonable about it (except for the SILKEN BACK SMUT oh my god the scolding he gave her! The lady doth protest too much...) and Polly had the right to be a little unreasonable because, well, she was young and in a way very naïve. And I can't seem to go on about this subject, because my heart feels like it's about to break. Yes, I was utterly touched by their relationship and uh oh yeah alright. Wow. I just really don't get it why so many people saw it somehow creepy or gross, because there was never anything truly inappropriate going on, at least from Tom's side. It was just beautiful and so true and so desperately touching I almost lost it.
Overall, I think Fire and Hemlock was one of the most rereadable books I've read, even compared to Diana's other novels which I've always loved rereading because I've felt like there's always something I didn't catch last time. This book was like Diana multiplied by ten. And after I felt like I really understood the ending, it became even better. It's just what I call absolute literary perfection. The essay at the end of the newest edition was also perfect. I felt like I was going to faint whilst reading it because of all the little details Diana included to sculpt it into absolute flawlessness.
This book is mint. I want to give it way more than five stars.
July 22, 2022
I wish I could give this book infinite stars.
March 30, 2020
Re-read March 25, 2020
SO GOOD! Even more amazing on a second read! <3 I may add updated thoughts...
Original review
(First read January 1, 2016. Original review posted here: https://thepagedreamer.wordpress.com/...)
This is more like an essay than a review, I’m afraid, but it’s what I could come up with…
I’ve tried to write this review a couple times now, and I am in despair over it because Fire and Hemlock is simply too vast and… well, as Eleanor Cameron said (of a different book) in “The Green and Burning Tree“, it is “a wild, glimmering, shadowed, elusive kind of book.” That’s the best description I can find for it, and it’s not even in my own words.
I really want to review this book, but have absolutely no idea how. So I’m going to start typing and hope something comes out of it besides an incoherent ramble the size of a London train.
Fire and Hemlock is set in a modern-day England in the ’80s… both of which are slightly alien and unfamiliar to this young-ish American reader, so even though it’s “contemporary” and set in the real world, it actually felt a bit fantastical to me… Which is a good thing. (Occasionally I would go “Oh! So that’s what such-and-such is like/called in England! Fascinating!” or “Who knew that you flip records over to listen to the other side?” [I do know about tapes, but not records…])
Beneath the seemingly ordinary setting and life of the heroine, Polly, there runs a strong undercurrent of unusual happenings, rather frightening fantastical goings-on, and some snatches of wild shadowed fae stuff and magical sorts of things. The fact that the ordinary and the fantasy blend so flawlessly together in this book attests once again to Diana Wynne Jones’ brilliant skill as a writer.
As a retelling of the old folk tale/ballad about Tam Lin and also about Thomas the Rhymer, all the bits relating to both that wove into the story were fascinating, especially in said modern setting.
The book left me with a rather dizzying near-belief that it was something that had really happened. Yes, fantasy and all. It was so real that one nourishes a distinct and startlingly-firm suspicion that the whole thing must have actually happened… If not to the author herself, at least to someone she knew. It has that strong of a feeling of being real — at times painfully so. And in just the sort of elusive, mad sort of way, that is always a part of the most real yet strange dreams. I imagine that’s how it would feel like if such things happened to you or I…
There’s stuff about writing, too, which was great, and Polly’s a sort of writer. I liked her. It was fascinating and realistic as well to watch her grow up along the way in the book, from about a ten year old girl to a nineteen year old young woman. A lot of it’s her looking back and trying to remember things about when she was growing up.
Polly and Tom’s friendship — perhaps growing into something more… — is the heart of the book. I just loved it so much. They make up stories together, which in strange and sometimes terrible ways seem to come true. Their friendship is perfectly natural and beautifully written and just I can’t even explain it, but I adore that entire aspect of the book, especially the blooming but unconventional romance. It’s all just so masterfully done.
Of course, the best thing about the book is Mr. Thomas Lynn himself, yet another fabulous unpigeonholeable (that’s a word, I swear; or should be) character which this author seems to excel at. Tom plays cello and drives “like a hero” (a.k.a. like a madman; he is a horrible driver and it’s glorious; the parts with his horse I mean car were hilarious highlights of the book), has an epic abrupt startling silence which people run up against when he doesn’t want to talk about things, and a sort of yelping laugh which cuts off, and he has colorless hair and glasses which are like another character, and he will perfectly seriously discuss what most people would call “make-believe” with young Polly, since of course they’re in the business of being heroes, and sends her books all the time and you just sort of feel safe when he’s around, even if horrible fantastical things happen, and he’s part of a strange frightening mystery, entangled in it and can’t get free and you just feel awful for him but you know he wouldn’t want you to and that he’s all right, really; except that he’s really not all right at all; and he’s mysterious and also very open in a way, somehow, and you can’t really explain him at all and apparently I need to talk with people who’ve read this because otherwise I’ll just ramble on about him forever? I’m done now. Almost.
(But really, what isn’t to love about a fellow who says of books:
And about fairy stories:
It’s a giant of a book. At 420 very large hardback pages, it’s quite longer than the usual small-to-medium books by Diana Wynne Jones that I’ve read before (with a few exceptions) and yet I never wanted it to end. About halfway through, around when I felt like one of her other books would have been finishing, I panicked and thought, “Oh no, what if it ends soon? It needs to go on and on and on!” And then I checked and with relief and a sort of thrill of triumph, realized I had still a large amount to read. (Though my practical side threw a fit, seeing that it was after midnight and demanding that I go to bed — which I, naturally, ignored. The one strange — or not so strange — fact about Diana Wynne Jones books is that almost all of them that I’ve read, I’ve devoured in a sitting. Or at least in a single day. Which is fine for ordinarily lengths. But not so much for a 400+ page fantastic monster of a book which I started late at night to begin with… This was a stay-up-till-after-3-a.m. sort of book. I REGRET NOTHING.)
It is at once new and old. It gave me the feeling that I might have read it before, maybe, or had always known about it, while being at the same time entirely undiscovered. It reminded me of several other books that I’ve read and loved (or, considering the publication dates, I might better say they remind me of it…), while at the same time being completely unique. It’s like it somehow took snatches of a ton of books I love and weaved bits of them together into something new, but being its own thing at the same time. (The Penderwicks, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, as well as other books by Diana Wynne Jones… I feel like there were several others as well.) Also, all of the books it mentions, which Tom sends to Polly to read, were so fun to see listed — both the ones I’ve read and loved, and the ones I’ve not read and in some cases not even heard of (which of course makes me want to read them).
(“Polly had discovered The Lord of the Rings and was reading it for the fourth time under her desk in Maths.” was a particularly fabulous line in the book…)
In the category of complaints, it had its faults — all books do (well, except for a small handful, including a certain other book by the same author).
I will admit that I wanted much more of Tom himself in the story than he actually appeared in, but that can hardly be helped when it’s from the point of view of a girl who’s not allowed to see him and only does so from time to time.
It is also set in a modern setting, and therefore has some of the inevitable problems which are why I don’t like modern books much… (public school, so-called “friends”, split-up families etc.) but I liked this one in spite of them — like I said, it felt so real, so I can’t exactly complain about what happened as if it’s just a plot device if it happened, now can I? (I will say that poor Polly kind of has a dreadful life. …Actually, Tom does too. And yet here they are, plowing along! I suppose that’s heroism, right there…)
And the ending seemed to be rather sudden and, leading up to it, extremely vague to my mind so that I am still extremely confused and not entirely sure exactly what happened… though that could have just been the fact that by the time I reached the ending it was past 3 a.m., so that could have been the clock and/or a sleep-fogged mind talking… I also am of the opinion that many Diana Wynne Jones books require a second or perhaps third reading to fully understand it, especially some endings, so perhaps I’ll be all right if I read it again. And I don’t think it’s the author’s fault… I feel like it just went over my head or something. I do relish a thing that I don’t quite understand, when it means there’s always more to unearth in subsequent go-throughs.
It’s a book that you have to think about, which might not please some people, but definitely pleased me.
And of course, it’s the sort of book one spends most of the next day (or week… or month…) occasionally dipping back through it and rereading — preferably aloud, if any poor soul is near to be quoted at — the fabulously hilarious bits and smiling insanely over, just because you like it, even though you can’t quite understand why. That’s my experience, anyway…
I read this book on New Year’s Day (as I said, staying up till past 3, because it simply had to be finished!), which was a marvelous way to kick off my reading for the year.
And yes, it has taken me nearly an entire month to get around to writing this review. I still don’t feel as if I’ve done it justice. It’s quite simply impossible to describe.
I don’t think it’s everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it may have been mine. And quite good tea at that. Properly and gloriously British, bitter and sweet at once, and just the thing for a (long) rainy day, when one is longing for an elusive tale with a dose of ordinary mixed up with a dash of fantastic, as well as one-of-a-kind vibrant characters, a glorious love story (Tom would be berating me for that; sorry), and an enormous amount of classic Diana Wynne Jones humor.
I’ll be reading Fire and Hemlock again, I hope.
(And if you read this entire review, I quite sincerely applaud you and offer you cupcakes. Here.)
SO GOOD! Even more amazing on a second read! <3 I may add updated thoughts...
Original review
(First read January 1, 2016. Original review posted here: https://thepagedreamer.wordpress.com/...)
This is more like an essay than a review, I’m afraid, but it’s what I could come up with…
I’ve tried to write this review a couple times now, and I am in despair over it because Fire and Hemlock is simply too vast and… well, as Eleanor Cameron said (of a different book) in “The Green and Burning Tree“, it is “a wild, glimmering, shadowed, elusive kind of book.” That’s the best description I can find for it, and it’s not even in my own words.
I really want to review this book, but have absolutely no idea how. So I’m going to start typing and hope something comes out of it besides an incoherent ramble the size of a London train.
Fire and Hemlock is set in a modern-day England in the ’80s… both of which are slightly alien and unfamiliar to this young-ish American reader, so even though it’s “contemporary” and set in the real world, it actually felt a bit fantastical to me… Which is a good thing. (Occasionally I would go “Oh! So that’s what such-and-such is like/called in England! Fascinating!” or “Who knew that you flip records over to listen to the other side?” [I do know about tapes, but not records…])
Beneath the seemingly ordinary setting and life of the heroine, Polly, there runs a strong undercurrent of unusual happenings, rather frightening fantastical goings-on, and some snatches of wild shadowed fae stuff and magical sorts of things. The fact that the ordinary and the fantasy blend so flawlessly together in this book attests once again to Diana Wynne Jones’ brilliant skill as a writer.
As a retelling of the old folk tale/ballad about Tam Lin and also about Thomas the Rhymer, all the bits relating to both that wove into the story were fascinating, especially in said modern setting.
The book left me with a rather dizzying near-belief that it was something that had really happened. Yes, fantasy and all. It was so real that one nourishes a distinct and startlingly-firm suspicion that the whole thing must have actually happened… If not to the author herself, at least to someone she knew. It has that strong of a feeling of being real — at times painfully so. And in just the sort of elusive, mad sort of way, that is always a part of the most real yet strange dreams. I imagine that’s how it would feel like if such things happened to you or I…
There’s stuff about writing, too, which was great, and Polly’s a sort of writer. I liked her. It was fascinating and realistic as well to watch her grow up along the way in the book, from about a ten year old girl to a nineteen year old young woman. A lot of it’s her looking back and trying to remember things about when she was growing up.
Polly and Tom’s friendship — perhaps growing into something more… — is the heart of the book. I just loved it so much. They make up stories together, which in strange and sometimes terrible ways seem to come true. Their friendship is perfectly natural and beautifully written and just I can’t even explain it, but I adore that entire aspect of the book, especially the blooming but unconventional romance. It’s all just so masterfully done.
Of course, the best thing about the book is Mr. Thomas Lynn himself, yet another fabulous unpigeonholeable (that’s a word, I swear; or should be) character which this author seems to excel at. Tom plays cello and drives “like a hero” (a.k.a. like a madman; he is a horrible driver and it’s glorious; the parts with his horse I mean car were hilarious highlights of the book), has an epic abrupt startling silence which people run up against when he doesn’t want to talk about things, and a sort of yelping laugh which cuts off, and he has colorless hair and glasses which are like another character, and he will perfectly seriously discuss what most people would call “make-believe” with young Polly, since of course they’re in the business of being heroes, and sends her books all the time and you just sort of feel safe when he’s around, even if horrible fantastical things happen, and he’s part of a strange frightening mystery, entangled in it and can’t get free and you just feel awful for him but you know he wouldn’t want you to and that he’s all right, really; except that he’s really not all right at all; and he’s mysterious and also very open in a way, somehow, and you can’t really explain him at all and apparently I need to talk with people who’ve read this because otherwise I’ll just ramble on about him forever? I’m done now. Almost.
(But really, what isn’t to love about a fellow who says of books:
“…don’t do that to that book! … You’ve got it open, lying on its face,” Mr. Lynn said. “The poor thing’s in torment.”
And about fairy stories:
“Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.”)
It’s a giant of a book. At 420 very large hardback pages, it’s quite longer than the usual small-to-medium books by Diana Wynne Jones that I’ve read before (with a few exceptions) and yet I never wanted it to end. About halfway through, around when I felt like one of her other books would have been finishing, I panicked and thought, “Oh no, what if it ends soon? It needs to go on and on and on!” And then I checked and with relief and a sort of thrill of triumph, realized I had still a large amount to read. (Though my practical side threw a fit, seeing that it was after midnight and demanding that I go to bed — which I, naturally, ignored. The one strange — or not so strange — fact about Diana Wynne Jones books is that almost all of them that I’ve read, I’ve devoured in a sitting. Or at least in a single day. Which is fine for ordinarily lengths. But not so much for a 400+ page fantastic monster of a book which I started late at night to begin with… This was a stay-up-till-after-3-a.m. sort of book. I REGRET NOTHING.)
It is at once new and old. It gave me the feeling that I might have read it before, maybe, or had always known about it, while being at the same time entirely undiscovered. It reminded me of several other books that I’ve read and loved (or, considering the publication dates, I might better say they remind me of it…), while at the same time being completely unique. It’s like it somehow took snatches of a ton of books I love and weaved bits of them together into something new, but being its own thing at the same time. (The Penderwicks, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, as well as other books by Diana Wynne Jones… I feel like there were several others as well.) Also, all of the books it mentions, which Tom sends to Polly to read, were so fun to see listed — both the ones I’ve read and loved, and the ones I’ve not read and in some cases not even heard of (which of course makes me want to read them).
(“Polly had discovered The Lord of the Rings and was reading it for the fourth time under her desk in Maths.” was a particularly fabulous line in the book…)
In the category of complaints, it had its faults — all books do (well, except for a small handful, including a certain other book by the same author).
I will admit that I wanted much more of Tom himself in the story than he actually appeared in, but that can hardly be helped when it’s from the point of view of a girl who’s not allowed to see him and only does so from time to time.
It is also set in a modern setting, and therefore has some of the inevitable problems which are why I don’t like modern books much… (public school, so-called “friends”, split-up families etc.) but I liked this one in spite of them — like I said, it felt so real, so I can’t exactly complain about what happened as if it’s just a plot device if it happened, now can I? (I will say that poor Polly kind of has a dreadful life. …Actually, Tom does too. And yet here they are, plowing along! I suppose that’s heroism, right there…)
And the ending seemed to be rather sudden and, leading up to it, extremely vague to my mind so that I am still extremely confused and not entirely sure exactly what happened… though that could have just been the fact that by the time I reached the ending it was past 3 a.m., so that could have been the clock and/or a sleep-fogged mind talking… I also am of the opinion that many Diana Wynne Jones books require a second or perhaps third reading to fully understand it, especially some endings, so perhaps I’ll be all right if I read it again. And I don’t think it’s the author’s fault… I feel like it just went over my head or something. I do relish a thing that I don’t quite understand, when it means there’s always more to unearth in subsequent go-throughs.
It’s a book that you have to think about, which might not please some people, but definitely pleased me.
And of course, it’s the sort of book one spends most of the next day (or week… or month…) occasionally dipping back through it and rereading — preferably aloud, if any poor soul is near to be quoted at — the fabulously hilarious bits and smiling insanely over, just because you like it, even though you can’t quite understand why. That’s my experience, anyway…
I read this book on New Year’s Day (as I said, staying up till past 3, because it simply had to be finished!), which was a marvelous way to kick off my reading for the year.
And yes, it has taken me nearly an entire month to get around to writing this review. I still don’t feel as if I’ve done it justice. It’s quite simply impossible to describe.
I don’t think it’s everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it may have been mine. And quite good tea at that. Properly and gloriously British, bitter and sweet at once, and just the thing for a (long) rainy day, when one is longing for an elusive tale with a dose of ordinary mixed up with a dash of fantastic, as well as one-of-a-kind vibrant characters, a glorious love story (Tom would be berating me for that; sorry), and an enormous amount of classic Diana Wynne Jones humor.
I’ll be reading Fire and Hemlock again, I hope.
(And if you read this entire review, I quite sincerely applaud you and offer you cupcakes. Here.)
April 13, 2011
I was disappointed in this when I was 10, but all my friends seem to have loved it so I gave it another try. It makes more sense now, although it is still rather confusing, especially the end. I enjoyed it this time around but it is still not among my favorite or even second-tier favorites of DWJ's books. There were just too many elements that didn't work for me. I didn't like Polly that much as a character, even though I thought her depiction was excellent. I liked the parts about reading and writing -- but then that sort of died away as Polly got older. In the end there were too many elements not adequately explained. But I'm the no-loose-ends type.
November 11, 2015
This one had a promising start, but it rambled around too long and came to a muddled sort of end. Some of Jones's books (Howl's Moving Castle, for instance) I've loved, some (some of the less stellar Chrestomanci books) I've liked, and a couple have just been disappointing for me. This one falls into that last category. The characters are really excellent -- fully portrayed and distinctive -- and the concept is intriguing. But a couple aspects spoiled it for me. One was the ick factor of . Another is the amount of time spent on Polly's dysfunctional family. Yes, we see her maturing in the way she deals with them, and yes, her mother's behavior parallels that of the villainness, but still, for me it dragged. Finally, the dramatic "battle" at the end was just confusing. The pace had picked up nicely, she had my interest, and then... I just could not figure out what Happened. If Jones was going for "mystical and mysterious," she got it, but also "unclear and unsatisfying." So. This one was interesting, and it had some very memorable moments and characters, but it's certainly not one I'll be going back to.
*In the interest of fairness, this is a children's book, and I am far, Far older than the target audience. A young teenage girl might well find much to love here. Our heroine learns to deal with family problems, forms lasting and not-so-lasting friendships, copes with school dramas, and spends a lot of time on Boys. Jones writes very well, and I can see how for the right reader this might be a great book. Still, I read it aloud, to my teenagers, and they also found the ending confusing, though one of them Loved the book ("It was Amazing!") and one of them liked it ("3.5 stars").
*In the interest of fairness, this is a children's book, and I am far, Far older than the target audience. A young teenage girl might well find much to love here. Our heroine learns to deal with family problems, forms lasting and not-so-lasting friendships, copes with school dramas, and spends a lot of time on Boys. Jones writes very well, and I can see how for the right reader this might be a great book. Still, I read it aloud, to my teenagers, and they also found the ending confusing, though one of them Loved the book ("It was Amazing!") and one of them liked it ("3.5 stars").
November 28, 2022
Moving this from 4 to 5 stars for my 2022 reread. It's such an uncanny, compelling and imaginative book, and I think about it all the time.
2020 review:
This book is very strange! It's unlike any other Wynne Jones I have read because it's set firmly in the south of England in 1985, and though there are fantasy elements, they are minimal. Yet it leaves the reader with a feeling of weirdness and creepiness entirely disproportionate to the events described. Polly is a lonely girl whose parents are divorcing. Her grandmother is the only figure of stability in her life, as her mother and father ignore her or use her as leverage between them. When Polly is visiting her grandmother, she accidentally gatecrashes a funeral, and is befriended by Mr Thomas Lynn, a concert cellist and a man many years older than she is. Polly, age 10, suggests they play, "Let's pretend!" and spins a story in which Tom is a hero, and she is his sidekick. He appears to be utterly charmed by her, and gives her a strange photograph called "Fire and Hemlock".
Over the next five years, the friendship between Tom and Polly deepens. I first read this when I was 12, and saw nothing strange in the friendship between Tom and Polly, but rereading this as an adult, it reads very much as though Tom is grooming her. He sends Polly letters and books, brings her out to lunch, takes her for rides in his car, and compliments her on her appearance. There is never any hint that he does anything inappropriate, but the narrative makes clear that their friendship is unusual, and the reader gradually comes to the realisation that Tom is using Polly for his own ends. He is not simply a kindly avuncular figure: he needs Polly to help him with a supernatural problem. Meanwhile, hints of the uncanny creep into Polly's life in the form of mysterious photographs, the gaze of a strange woman, and a gradual feeling that her memories aren't quite her own. At the same time, Polly's parents leave her more and more alone, and her father abandons her while her mother becomes completely hostile and kicks her out of the house. Polly's Granny steps in, but Polly is understandably betrayed and vulnerable. (As an adult I was thinking, "This kid is going to need some therapy!") It's not surprising that she longs for Thomas Lynn's occasional affection, and she is exactly the kind of child who would be particularly vulnerable to grooming. Part of what makes this book so uncanny is how utterly believable everything is: the mixture of Polly's dislocation and sense of betrayal with her growing obsession with Thomas Lynn, who gives her occasional affection and encouragement. The supernatural elements creep into this mixture, and seem as real as Polly's strong emotions.
Wynne Jones's writing is fantastic here: clear, sensitive and imaginative, she captures the mysterious threats around Thomas Lynn's life, and the dangerous position in which he has put Polly. Though I enjoyed this immensely, I have a few caveats: while I like that the friendship between Polly and Tom is depicted as very odd, it makes the ending ambivalent: are we supposed to like Tom? Do we dislike him for the ways he has manipulated Polly? It's hard to know what Wynne Jones' intention is, and while leaving things up the reader's interpretation can be good, it doesn't entirely hold together here. The last few scenes also feel rushed, and while they're very gripping, some elements are confusing, which is a shame when the rest of the book is so well realised. This left me feeling very odd, but I'm glad I reread it and would recommend it.
2020 review:
This book is very strange! It's unlike any other Wynne Jones I have read because it's set firmly in the south of England in 1985, and though there are fantasy elements, they are minimal. Yet it leaves the reader with a feeling of weirdness and creepiness entirely disproportionate to the events described. Polly is a lonely girl whose parents are divorcing. Her grandmother is the only figure of stability in her life, as her mother and father ignore her or use her as leverage between them. When Polly is visiting her grandmother, she accidentally gatecrashes a funeral, and is befriended by Mr Thomas Lynn, a concert cellist and a man many years older than she is. Polly, age 10, suggests they play, "Let's pretend!" and spins a story in which Tom is a hero, and she is his sidekick. He appears to be utterly charmed by her, and gives her a strange photograph called "Fire and Hemlock".
Over the next five years, the friendship between Tom and Polly deepens. I first read this when I was 12, and saw nothing strange in the friendship between Tom and Polly, but rereading this as an adult, it reads very much as though Tom is grooming her. He sends Polly letters and books, brings her out to lunch, takes her for rides in his car, and compliments her on her appearance. There is never any hint that he does anything inappropriate, but the narrative makes clear that their friendship is unusual, and the reader gradually comes to the realisation that Tom is using Polly for his own ends. He is not simply a kindly avuncular figure: he needs Polly to help him with a supernatural problem. Meanwhile, hints of the uncanny creep into Polly's life in the form of mysterious photographs, the gaze of a strange woman, and a gradual feeling that her memories aren't quite her own. At the same time, Polly's parents leave her more and more alone, and her father abandons her while her mother becomes completely hostile and kicks her out of the house. Polly's Granny steps in, but Polly is understandably betrayed and vulnerable. (As an adult I was thinking, "This kid is going to need some therapy!") It's not surprising that she longs for Thomas Lynn's occasional affection, and she is exactly the kind of child who would be particularly vulnerable to grooming. Part of what makes this book so uncanny is how utterly believable everything is: the mixture of Polly's dislocation and sense of betrayal with her growing obsession with Thomas Lynn, who gives her occasional affection and encouragement. The supernatural elements creep into this mixture, and seem as real as Polly's strong emotions.
Wynne Jones's writing is fantastic here: clear, sensitive and imaginative, she captures the mysterious threats around Thomas Lynn's life, and the dangerous position in which he has put Polly. Though I enjoyed this immensely, I have a few caveats: while I like that the friendship between Polly and Tom is depicted as very odd, it makes the ending ambivalent: are we supposed to like Tom? Do we dislike him for the ways he has manipulated Polly? It's hard to know what Wynne Jones' intention is, and while leaving things up the reader's interpretation can be good, it doesn't entirely hold together here. The last few scenes also feel rushed, and while they're very gripping, some elements are confusing, which is a shame when the rest of the book is so well realised. This left me feeling very odd, but I'm glad I reread it and would recommend it.
July 22, 2017
I've been on a DWJ re-reading kick lately, after not having touched most of her books for 10, 15+ years. The Chrestomanci books are still fun and essentially as I remembered them. Fire and Hemlock, however, definitely does not read the same way it did when I was 15.
This is one weird, complex, richly allusive, and altogether singular book. It's billed as a take on Tam Lin, but it is by no means a retelling, despite a central character named Thomas Lynn. Instead, Diana Wynne Jones draws from a huge body of mythology, ballads, and fairy tales to build a story told mostly in flashback whose events don't make much sense until the final quarter of the book. Polly, 19, has two conflicting sets of childhood memories: in one foggy, dim set, she had a lively and unusual friendship with an adult cellist named Tom, who takes her on grand adventures (both real and fictional), sends her books and stories, and enjoys her company - at a time when her own parents, mid-divorce, are distant and bitter. In the other, Tom never existed outside of her imagination.
I like the way DWJ plops you in the middle of a story and reveals things to both reader and characters as she goes, but it does make the first 1/2 (at least) of Fire and Hemlock relatively sedate. It's mostly about Polly's childhood, narrated with DWJ's usual keen eye: outgrowing a childhood friend, surviving her parents' break-up and realizing that they are deeply flawed, reading books and making up stories with Tom. But there's a growing sense of urgency and apprehension as small incidents - a most peculiar funeral in an even stranger house, a few close calls that weirdly parallel Polly and Tom's made up stories - start to add up into a much bigger and more dangerous whole. Things aren't fully spelled out, but enough clues are given for readers to put things together on their own. There's a lot to reward careful reading and analysis, too. I don't think I fully picked up on parallels to one of my favorite fairy tales, 'East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon' the first time around, but Polly's initial reaction to reading the story herself is pretty entertaining in retrospect.
It would be easy to be squicked out by the friendship/maybe romance between Polly and Tom (10+ years her elder), except that DWJ manages to create something that comes across as genuinely affectionate and unique in the way that real friendships are. While rereading, I was surprised at how compromised and morally ambiguous many of the characters (and not just the villains) in this book are, acting out of fear, selfishness, self-delusion -- and the repercussions that result. Fire and Hemlock is considered young adult, but some of the ideas it plays with are far more adult than the newest wave of sex-and-violence filled YA fiction.
I still don't think Fire and Hemlock is perfect. The ending is rushed and unnecessarily vague, and I don't think it works as a romance. Regardless, I'm glad I reread this. I found it a lot more interesting and thought-provoking than I did the first time around.
This is one weird, complex, richly allusive, and altogether singular book. It's billed as a take on Tam Lin, but it is by no means a retelling, despite a central character named Thomas Lynn. Instead, Diana Wynne Jones draws from a huge body of mythology, ballads, and fairy tales to build a story told mostly in flashback whose events don't make much sense until the final quarter of the book. Polly, 19, has two conflicting sets of childhood memories: in one foggy, dim set, she had a lively and unusual friendship with an adult cellist named Tom, who takes her on grand adventures (both real and fictional), sends her books and stories, and enjoys her company - at a time when her own parents, mid-divorce, are distant and bitter. In the other, Tom never existed outside of her imagination.
I like the way DWJ plops you in the middle of a story and reveals things to both reader and characters as she goes, but it does make the first 1/2 (at least) of Fire and Hemlock relatively sedate. It's mostly about Polly's childhood, narrated with DWJ's usual keen eye: outgrowing a childhood friend, surviving her parents' break-up and realizing that they are deeply flawed, reading books and making up stories with Tom. But there's a growing sense of urgency and apprehension as small incidents - a most peculiar funeral in an even stranger house, a few close calls that weirdly parallel Polly and Tom's made up stories - start to add up into a much bigger and more dangerous whole. Things aren't fully spelled out, but enough clues are given for readers to put things together on their own. There's a lot to reward careful reading and analysis, too. I don't think I fully picked up on parallels to one of my favorite fairy tales, 'East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon' the first time around, but Polly's initial reaction to reading the story herself is pretty entertaining in retrospect.
It would be easy to be squicked out by the friendship/maybe romance between Polly and Tom (10+ years her elder), except that DWJ manages to create something that comes across as genuinely affectionate and unique in the way that real friendships are. While rereading, I was surprised at how compromised and morally ambiguous many of the characters (and not just the villains) in this book are, acting out of fear, selfishness, self-delusion -- and the repercussions that result. Fire and Hemlock is considered young adult, but some of the ideas it plays with are far more adult than the newest wave of sex-and-violence filled YA fiction.
I still don't think Fire and Hemlock is perfect. The ending is rushed and unnecessarily vague, and I don't think it works as a romance. Regardless, I'm glad I reread this. I found it a lot more interesting and thought-provoking than I did the first time around.
May 14, 2019
The contemporary Tam Lin retelling where ten-year-old Polly accidentally gatecrashes a funeral and gets involved in Tom's attempts to free himself from a faerie queen figure.
I liked both Tom and Polly, and I enjoyed the book, but I had a lot of problems with it.
My chief problem was: I have a ten-year-old, and my suspension of disbelief, which handled all the magic stuff without difficulty, totally choked on the idea that anyone (even people as irresponsible and immature as Polly's parents) would hand a girl that age off to a strange man who just happened to strike up a conversation with her at a funeral. Or even that the girl herself wouldn't smell a rat.
I can, in fact, imagine a much more sinister story happening behind this one, in which there's an entirely different reason why Polly's lost her memory!
The climax is problematic because giant battles with magic are just hard to dramatize. As the action gets more magical, it tends to get either less active or less comprehensible. (I had the same problem with Magic or Madness.
And the past and present were not woven together well. I couldn't see any reason for Polly to regain her memory when she did, and not the day before or the month after.
I liked both Tom and Polly, and I enjoyed the book, but I had a lot of problems with it.
My chief problem was: I have a ten-year-old, and my suspension of disbelief, which handled all the magic stuff without difficulty, totally choked on the idea that anyone (even people as irresponsible and immature as Polly's parents) would hand a girl that age off to a strange man who just happened to strike up a conversation with her at a funeral. Or even that the girl herself wouldn't smell a rat.
I can, in fact, imagine a much more sinister story happening behind this one, in which there's an entirely different reason why Polly's lost her memory!
The climax is problematic because giant battles with magic are just hard to dramatize. As the action gets more magical, it tends to get either less active or less comprehensible. (I had the same problem with Magic or Madness.
And the past and present were not woven together well. I couldn't see any reason for Polly to regain her memory when she did, and not the day before or the month after.
November 8, 2023
This is a book that needs careful reading, and one of those few where the surprises were better the second time around, when they weren't surprises at all.
This time, too, the ending made more sense. There are so many books within this book, not just Tam Lin, but East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon is discussed, as is The Golden Bough and numerous other legends and fairy tales. The kings who must die and be reborn, the lives stolen by fairies, the cursed men who get carried off by trolls/fairies/snow queens/witches and then returned, cursed, or are used to restore the fairy king. I even found a list here on Goodreads of all the books mentioned in Fire and Hemlock, and it's looong. Reading this the first time I thought it was kind of random, and then ended very suddenly, but now I see how this all went together. (I'm a little embarrassed that I read it for the first time as an adult who owned a copy of both Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and Ellen Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer and still didn't see all the parallels.) It's both an excellent coming-of-age novel and a brilliant fairy tale.
The relationship in this is still weird, but at the same time I can why Jones did it. Polly's games of pretend wouldn't have worked if she were older, and the length of time they knew each other (and forgot each other) needed a younger starting point or it wouldn't have been a children's/young adult book. And the evolution of their relationship wasn't as shocking as I thought it was the first time around, especially considering the time they were separated. I think it's more off-putting if you look too hard at the cover art, which features a pretty blond 8yo and a creepy 60yo man. Reading it now with the foreknowledge that Tom is only about 21 when they first meet, which also makes his haplessness, brand new driver's license, and him running around in jeans and an old anorak make so much more sense. Seb's calling him Old Tom, and Morton Leroy (btw, just got that as well: Leroy/le Roi) acting as though Tom's feebleminded are both to undermine Tom and to put Polly off him, which works almost too well, as it makes the reader go off him as well!
This time, too, the ending made more sense. There are so many books within this book, not just Tam Lin, but East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon is discussed, as is The Golden Bough and numerous other legends and fairy tales. The kings who must die and be reborn, the lives stolen by fairies, the cursed men who get carried off by trolls/fairies/snow queens/witches and then returned, cursed, or are used to restore the fairy king. I even found a list here on Goodreads of all the books mentioned in Fire and Hemlock, and it's looong. Reading this the first time I thought it was kind of random, and then ended very suddenly, but now I see how this all went together. (I'm a little embarrassed that I read it for the first time as an adult who owned a copy of both Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and Ellen Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer and still didn't see all the parallels.) It's both an excellent coming-of-age novel and a brilliant fairy tale.
The relationship in this is still weird, but at the same time I can why Jones did it. Polly's games of pretend wouldn't have worked if she were older, and the length of time they knew each other (and forgot each other) needed a younger starting point or it wouldn't have been a children's/young adult book. And the evolution of their relationship wasn't as shocking as I thought it was the first time around, especially considering the time they were separated. I think it's more off-putting if you look too hard at the cover art, which features a pretty blond 8yo and a creepy 60yo man. Reading it now with the foreknowledge that Tom is only about 21 when they first meet, which also makes his haplessness, brand new driver's license, and him running around in jeans and an old anorak make so much more sense. Seb's calling him Old Tom, and Morton Leroy (btw, just got that as well: Leroy/le Roi) acting as though Tom's feebleminded are both to undermine Tom and to put Polly off him, which works almost too well, as it makes the reader go off him as well!
April 21, 2023
Stars: 3.5 out of 5
This book has been languishing on my TBR list since 2013, and even though I own the book, I never got around to reading it. So thank you for the Cleaning out your TBR challenge for finally giving me the push I needed to tackle it.
All in all, I actually liked the story. It has that magical realism that I love in Neil Gaiman and Garth Nix's books, where the characters live in a seemingly perfectly normal and mundane world, but sometimes elements of the supernatural infringe upon their existence. Or blend with it, like it happened for most of this book.
I also loved Polly. She is an excellent main character. She is complex and fleshed-out, and really likeable. I can understand why she would be so taken by Mr Lynn - he is the only adult, apart from Granny, that showed her the least bit of care and interest. The more you learn about her home life, the more you realize just how horrible and self-centered her parents are. To them, having a child is an obstacle to their happiness. And the culmination of that is when her mother sends her packing to live with her father... who didn't even have the courage to tell his new wife that Polly was coming to stay for good. And what kind of father just leaves their daughter at the train station without making sure she has a ticket and enough money for a snack, or actually seeing her off on that train?
Polly was a neglected child who craved for someone who would care about her, so she clung to Mr Lynn who had shown her a little kindness, but most importantly, who listened to her and cheered for her accomplishments, no matter how big or small they were.
So yes, I liked this book, but there is one factor that I simply can't overlook. That's the fact that Mr Lynn used her. An adult purposefully befriended a ten year old child and continuously insinuated himself into her life over the years. Yes, you could argue that he had a magical reason for this, and was hoping that she would save him from the fairy queen he was indentured to, but the fact stays - he was grooming her. He knew exactly what he was doing, and it's not like Polly could give her consent to this. Not when she was a child. And that's something that I simply can't overlook. It makes my skin crawl. So I am taking 1 star off my score here.
However, I am glad I finally got around to reading this book, and I will check out other books by this author.
This book has been languishing on my TBR list since 2013, and even though I own the book, I never got around to reading it. So thank you for the Cleaning out your TBR challenge for finally giving me the push I needed to tackle it.
All in all, I actually liked the story. It has that magical realism that I love in Neil Gaiman and Garth Nix's books, where the characters live in a seemingly perfectly normal and mundane world, but sometimes elements of the supernatural infringe upon their existence. Or blend with it, like it happened for most of this book.
I also loved Polly. She is an excellent main character. She is complex and fleshed-out, and really likeable. I can understand why she would be so taken by Mr Lynn - he is the only adult, apart from Granny, that showed her the least bit of care and interest. The more you learn about her home life, the more you realize just how horrible and self-centered her parents are. To them, having a child is an obstacle to their happiness. And the culmination of that is when her mother sends her packing to live with her father... who didn't even have the courage to tell his new wife that Polly was coming to stay for good. And what kind of father just leaves their daughter at the train station without making sure she has a ticket and enough money for a snack, or actually seeing her off on that train?
Polly was a neglected child who craved for someone who would care about her, so she clung to Mr Lynn who had shown her a little kindness, but most importantly, who listened to her and cheered for her accomplishments, no matter how big or small they were.
So yes, I liked this book, but there is one factor that I simply can't overlook. That's the fact that Mr Lynn used her. An adult purposefully befriended a ten year old child and continuously insinuated himself into her life over the years. Yes, you could argue that he had a magical reason for this, and was hoping that she would save him from the fairy queen he was indentured to, but the fact stays - he was grooming her. He knew exactly what he was doing, and it's not like Polly could give her consent to this. Not when she was a child. And that's something that I simply can't overlook. It makes my skin crawl. So I am taking 1 star off my score here.
However, I am glad I finally got around to reading this book, and I will check out other books by this author.
September 6, 2021
1.5/5
it feels really unfortunate that i ended up disliking this as strongly as i did because i actually really enjoyed the first 3/4 of the novel! but by the ending it had lost me entirely for a number of reasons
in retrospect part of it is on me - i'm not at all familiar with tam lin and did not realize that this novel was a retelling that also incorporates other mythologies, and i definitely should've caught onto it sooner - but because of that i think the vast majority of the complexity of this novel went over my head. even for the parts that i thought i was following along, i now realize i was likely missing a lot of core understanding for the story
case in point: tam lin being a love story, making polly and tom lynn the love interests of this story. while a 10 year-old girl befriending a strange older man probably should've set off my radars from the start, i was willing to overlook the strangeness and viewed their friendship as familial. but as polly ages and when the romantic aspect of it shows up near the end, the early years of their friendship look more and more like grooming which spoiled pretty much any enjoyment i had found in the beginning parts of the book
also, i found the ending to be wildly confusing. i was looking forward to how everything would be explained and wrapped up, but i could honestly explain nothing about what happens in the last 50 pages or so. i don't know if i found it so confusing because i was unfamiliar with tam lin or just because the writing is so incredibly vague, but by the time i reached the last page i felt like i had no answers but so many more questions
i actually do like to read retellings of classic stories! but i think for a retelling to truly be successful the reader shouldn't need to be familiar with the source material (or read a supplemental essay explaining the intricacies of the mythologies referenced) to understand and enjoy the story. since that was not the case here i found the story massively confusing and disappointing
it feels really unfortunate that i ended up disliking this as strongly as i did because i actually really enjoyed the first 3/4 of the novel! but by the ending it had lost me entirely for a number of reasons
in retrospect part of it is on me - i'm not at all familiar with tam lin and did not realize that this novel was a retelling that also incorporates other mythologies, and i definitely should've caught onto it sooner - but because of that i think the vast majority of the complexity of this novel went over my head. even for the parts that i thought i was following along, i now realize i was likely missing a lot of core understanding for the story
case in point: tam lin being a love story, making polly and tom lynn the love interests of this story. while a 10 year-old girl befriending a strange older man probably should've set off my radars from the start, i was willing to overlook the strangeness and viewed their friendship as familial. but as polly ages and when the romantic aspect of it shows up near the end, the early years of their friendship look more and more like grooming which spoiled pretty much any enjoyment i had found in the beginning parts of the book
also, i found the ending to be wildly confusing. i was looking forward to how everything would be explained and wrapped up, but i could honestly explain nothing about what happens in the last 50 pages or so. i don't know if i found it so confusing because i was unfamiliar with tam lin or just because the writing is so incredibly vague, but by the time i reached the last page i felt like i had no answers but so many more questions
i actually do like to read retellings of classic stories! but i think for a retelling to truly be successful the reader shouldn't need to be familiar with the source material (or read a supplemental essay explaining the intricacies of the mythologies referenced) to understand and enjoy the story. since that was not the case here i found the story massively confusing and disappointing
April 26, 2021
STILL THE BEST BOOK IN THE WORLD, glad to have that confirmed, I can die happy now
I was supposed to be pacing myself with this reread but of course I had to go and read the last 150 pages in one go like a tool :') and now what shall I do :')
Anyway, a list of some of the reasons this is indeed the best book in the world even if only like 3 people have read it:
*all the references and intertextuality and the complexity and how everything slots into place but also doesn't make sense in the best way possible sughusrhg
*Granny always made Polly think of biscuits. She had a dry, shortbread sort of way to her, with a hidden taste that came out afterwards
*Polly swapping the pictures so Tom could have some nice ones and one later turning out to be a real Picasso
*the fact that Polly spends half of the book comparing Tom to a turtle and saying he's old when the poor guy's like 20 and apparently hot
*Mr Lynn yelled at the horse that its grandfather was a donkey with venereal disease, and then "You cartload of cat's meat. Mindless dog food. They'll eat you in Belgium for less than this."
...You tell him, Tom
*and the reason I'll be single forever: Tom sends her 12 (12!) books for Christmas, and that's just #goals. shame the guy's not actually real
*further evidence of Tom being amazing: The most interesting thing they found was a small book shop, which Mr. Lynn dived into like a homing pigeon
*The thing I hadn't bargained for about hero business, the important part said, is how terribly embarrassing it is.(...) You have to learn not to notice how silly you feel
*Granny's reaction when Polly bakes her first cake being "Well, it's nothing a blind man on a galloping horse wouldn't see"
*"Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look."
*AND HE KEEPS ON SENDING HER BOOKS
*"Tom's what I call a creative driver," said Sam. "And the cello's always allowed the best seat."
*If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.
*the fact that Polly's grandmother bullied office clerks and solicitors and whoever into letting Polly stay with her by, like, staring contests
*this glorious first kiss: She stood there and let him lay his mouth against hers, and tried to decide if you kept your eyes open or shut them, and in the end she settled for one of each.
*the fact that Ed signs his letter "Tan Thare (alias Ed)" and not "Ed (alias Tan Thare)"
*the whole 'rippling back' mess, oh boy
*"Happiness isn't a /thing/. You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea."
*To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.
*how what the two of them have in common is the things they don't say rather than the things they say jeahiusejeg
Anyway, all is good. Every five pages or so my heart would do strange things like scraping against the inside of my everything because of how much I love this book, but all is good, all is well 3
_____________________________
Hello, favorite book. Hello, book I'd take to a desert island. Hello, book I want to be buried with.
(Doesn't it say a lot about the quality of Jones' books' covers when of all the editions, I've had to choose this one in a poor attempt at saving my reading challenge's aesthetic? Yes, I know I'm shallow, but what's up with that other cover for this where Polly looks like she's 40 and Tom looks like he's 60?)
Anyway, God. I don't even know what to say. This was so lovely and nothing like what I expected but in the best possible way. And the relationship in this just broke my heart. I think I'm just going to read analysis of this book for a week now and maybe I'll understand something about the last thirty pages or so...
I was supposed to be pacing myself with this reread but of course I had to go and read the last 150 pages in one go like a tool :') and now what shall I do :')
Anyway, a list of some of the reasons this is indeed the best book in the world even if only like 3 people have read it:
*all the references and intertextuality and the complexity and how everything slots into place but also doesn't make sense in the best way possible sughusrhg
*Granny always made Polly think of biscuits. She had a dry, shortbread sort of way to her, with a hidden taste that came out afterwards
*Polly swapping the pictures so Tom could have some nice ones and one later turning out to be a real Picasso
*the fact that Polly spends half of the book comparing Tom to a turtle and saying he's old when the poor guy's like 20 and apparently hot
*Mr Lynn yelled at the horse that its grandfather was a donkey with venereal disease, and then "You cartload of cat's meat. Mindless dog food. They'll eat you in Belgium for less than this."
...You tell him, Tom
*and the reason I'll be single forever: Tom sends her 12 (12!) books for Christmas, and that's just #goals. shame the guy's not actually real
*further evidence of Tom being amazing: The most interesting thing they found was a small book shop, which Mr. Lynn dived into like a homing pigeon
*The thing I hadn't bargained for about hero business, the important part said, is how terribly embarrassing it is.(...) You have to learn not to notice how silly you feel
*Granny's reaction when Polly bakes her first cake being "Well, it's nothing a blind man on a galloping horse wouldn't see"
*"Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look."
*AND HE KEEPS ON SENDING HER BOOKS
*"Tom's what I call a creative driver," said Sam. "And the cello's always allowed the best seat."
*If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.
*the fact that Polly's grandmother bullied office clerks and solicitors and whoever into letting Polly stay with her by, like, staring contests
*this glorious first kiss: She stood there and let him lay his mouth against hers, and tried to decide if you kept your eyes open or shut them, and in the end she settled for one of each.
*the fact that Ed signs his letter "Tan Thare (alias Ed)" and not "Ed (alias Tan Thare)"
*the whole 'rippling back' mess, oh boy
*"Happiness isn't a /thing/. You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea."
*To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.
*how what the two of them have in common is the things they don't say rather than the things they say jeahiusejeg
Anyway, all is good. Every five pages or so my heart would do strange things like scraping against the inside of my everything because of how much I love this book, but all is good, all is well 3
_____________________________
Hello, favorite book. Hello, book I'd take to a desert island. Hello, book I want to be buried with.
(Doesn't it say a lot about the quality of Jones' books' covers when of all the editions, I've had to choose this one in a poor attempt at saving my reading challenge's aesthetic? Yes, I know I'm shallow, but what's up with that other cover for this where Polly looks like she's 40 and Tom looks like he's 60?)
Anyway, God. I don't even know what to say. This was so lovely and nothing like what I expected but in the best possible way. And the relationship in this just broke my heart. I think I'm just going to read analysis of this book for a week now and maybe I'll understand something about the last thirty pages or so...
June 22, 2017
As nineteen-year-old Polly is packing to go away to college, she looks at a picture on her wall called "Fire and Hemlock", a mysterious image of flame and smoke; suddenly, new memories begin to enter her mind -- memories that reveal a childhood full of fantasies, yet full of dangers, a childhood in which she met a man named Thomas Lynn. In order to figure out what's happened to her, Polly must delve deeper and deeper into her new memories and discover where they came from and what they mean.
Fire and Hemlock is based on the ballad of Tam Lin, mixed with elements of Thomas the Rhymer and the workings of Jones's wonderfully inventive mind. It's gorgeously written, full of sharp images: listening to Tom and his string quartet practice, Polly thinks that "[i:]f you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins." Polly and Tom are wonderful characters, and Jones delineates their relationship with skill, as it moves from an adult and child friendship into something else.
The fantastical elements of the book are subtle at first and grow over the course of the book into a mystical ending, which I must admit is the one thing I'm not entirely happy with; it's a little too confusing (or perhaps too subtle) for me. Overall, though, this is simply a gorgeous, haunting book, one of the best from one of the best fantasy authors out there.
Fire and Hemlock is based on the ballad of Tam Lin, mixed with elements of Thomas the Rhymer and the workings of Jones's wonderfully inventive mind. It's gorgeously written, full of sharp images: listening to Tom and his string quartet practice, Polly thinks that "[i:]f you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins." Polly and Tom are wonderful characters, and Jones delineates their relationship with skill, as it moves from an adult and child friendship into something else.
The fantastical elements of the book are subtle at first and grow over the course of the book into a mystical ending, which I must admit is the one thing I'm not entirely happy with; it's a little too confusing (or perhaps too subtle) for me. Overall, though, this is simply a gorgeous, haunting book, one of the best from one of the best fantasy authors out there.
August 8, 2009
It's strange. I was sure at first that I'd read this when I was younger, and bits still chimed with me, but a lot of it felt like new discoveries. Strange parallels with the main character, here! I can't decide whether it counts as a new read or a reread. Hmm. Anyway! I just read a handful of reviews and they all mentioned the idea that when Diana Wynne Jones writes for children, magic doesn't need so much explaining as it does for adults. I think that probably is true, to some extent, but there are plenty of adults who can get on the ride too, and I did. Okay, I made my frowny face of confusion sometimes, but...
The characters are fun. I especially like Granny, I think, with the biscuity smell and the cat called Mintchoc and her matter-of-fact ways. And her sailing out to court battles, and winning them. I wanted to kick the rest of Polly's family. I do kind of wonder why there was rather a lot of emphasis on Polly's family woes, although I guess it does make it that much more realistic. Polly's a real fleshed-out sort of character, with the same kinds of worries as other kids -- nobody coming to her play, wondering whether a certain someone will show up to her sports day, wondering when she'll get a decent figure, worrying about her parents' divorce...
I definitely identified with the love of reading stuff. In case anyone wondered.
The plot is fun, too. It's based on old legends of Tam Lin/Thomas the Rhymer, etc. Makes me curious to go and pick up the other book I've got on my list about Thomas the Rhymer -- by Ellen Kushner. Hmm, maybe. Anyway, it's a legend I've always been somewhat interested in. Particularly since I heard Karine Polwart's take on it, in the form of a song, "Tongue That Cannot Lie". (Here on Spotify, lyrics here.) It's a modern take on it, really, an extension of the old legend into the present.
The main trouble with it is how much it picked up pace in the last quarter or so of the book. It lost me a couple of times, there. But I liked it overall, big grown up adult (nearly twenty omg omg omg omg omg) or not.
The characters are fun. I especially like Granny, I think, with the biscuity smell and the cat called Mintchoc and her matter-of-fact ways. And her sailing out to court battles, and winning them. I wanted to kick the rest of Polly's family. I do kind of wonder why there was rather a lot of emphasis on Polly's family woes, although I guess it does make it that much more realistic. Polly's a real fleshed-out sort of character, with the same kinds of worries as other kids -- nobody coming to her play, wondering whether a certain someone will show up to her sports day, wondering when she'll get a decent figure, worrying about her parents' divorce...
I definitely identified with the love of reading stuff. In case anyone wondered.
The plot is fun, too. It's based on old legends of Tam Lin/Thomas the Rhymer, etc. Makes me curious to go and pick up the other book I've got on my list about Thomas the Rhymer -- by Ellen Kushner. Hmm, maybe. Anyway, it's a legend I've always been somewhat interested in. Particularly since I heard Karine Polwart's take on it, in the form of a song, "Tongue That Cannot Lie". (Here on Spotify, lyrics here.) It's a modern take on it, really, an extension of the old legend into the present.
The main trouble with it is how much it picked up pace in the last quarter or so of the book. It lost me a couple of times, there. But I liked it overall, big grown up adult (nearly twenty omg omg omg omg omg) or not.
January 19, 2022
"Tam Lin" is an ancient Scottish legend, told in the form of song and preserved by 19th-century anthologist Francis James Child as one of his "Child Ballads." It is one of the best-known and best-loved of all the Ballads. Over the years, numerous respected folksingers have recorded their own versions of it, including Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny, and, most recently, Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer (the last is my favorite). "Tam Lin" also holds a special place in the hearts of fantasy fiction fans: Diana Wynne Jones, Patricia McKillip, and Alan Garner are just a few of the esteemed genre writers who have penned novels based on the legend.
When asked why they are so fascinated by the legend of "Tam Lin," many people claim it is the fact that the legend, in a rather proto-feminist way, revolves around the deeds of a female hero: a young woman named Janet who goes to battle against the Queen of Fairyland to save the soul of a man named Tam Lin whom the Queen has kidnapped and enthralled. But the legend has a darker side to it, too. In most versions of the song, Janet first meets Tam Lin when, for no clear reason, she decides to go flower-picking in a forest that she has been warned to stay away from, under threat of robbery or rape. Janet defies this warning and goes to the forest anyway, "as fast as she can go." When Tam Lin finds her there, he takes her virginity. The consensual nature of the act is dubious; one cannot help hearing resonances with the myth of Hades and Persephone. What is clear about Tam Lin's and Janet's encounter is that it takes place with a bizarre suddenness, before Janet even has a chance to ascertain whether Tam Lin is a human being or some kind of forest sprite. Tam Lin vanishes immediately afterward, only to reappear months later when Janet's pregnancy is beginning to show and she has returned to the forest to harvest abortifacient herbs. Only then does he tell her his sob story about being kidnapped by the Queen of Fairyland and enlist her help in securing his freedom.
Most novelists who retell the "Tam Lin" legend conveniently leave these early scenes out (although they may hint at them in subtle, non-overt ways; in Fire and Hemlock, a novel that departs from the original legend in manifold ways, beginning by recasting Janet as a solitary 10-year-old girl, there is an overarching sense of menace, with pedophilic/hebophilic appetites being ascribed to various minor characters -- and loss of innocence, broadly speaking, is a major theme).
Of course, different parts of this legend will speak more loudly to different people. Diana Wynne Jones, more lofty-minded than many, focuses in her retelling on the legend's representation of the "heroic ideal." Well, fortunately, there is room in the legend for us all. Wynne Jones is formidably well-read: the source material on which Fire and Hemlock is based not only includes the Child Ballads "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer," but also includes Homer's Odyssey, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Frazer's The Golden Bough, and dozens of other literary texts, encompassing the lofty, fat, and obscure. These literary forefathers figure into Fire and Hemlock in profound but pleasingly unobtrusive ways, leaving you with what seems on the surface to be nothing more than an unputdownable yarn. I read the whole book in a single sitting. The only part I really had a quibble with was the murky ending: after so much build-up, a novelist owes it to her readers to at least let them know what happened!!
When asked why they are so fascinated by the legend of "Tam Lin," many people claim it is the fact that the legend, in a rather proto-feminist way, revolves around the deeds of a female hero: a young woman named Janet who goes to battle against the Queen of Fairyland to save the soul of a man named Tam Lin whom the Queen has kidnapped and enthralled. But the legend has a darker side to it, too. In most versions of the song, Janet first meets Tam Lin when, for no clear reason, she decides to go flower-picking in a forest that she has been warned to stay away from, under threat of robbery or rape. Janet defies this warning and goes to the forest anyway, "as fast as she can go." When Tam Lin finds her there, he takes her virginity. The consensual nature of the act is dubious; one cannot help hearing resonances with the myth of Hades and Persephone. What is clear about Tam Lin's and Janet's encounter is that it takes place with a bizarre suddenness, before Janet even has a chance to ascertain whether Tam Lin is a human being or some kind of forest sprite. Tam Lin vanishes immediately afterward, only to reappear months later when Janet's pregnancy is beginning to show and she has returned to the forest to harvest abortifacient herbs. Only then does he tell her his sob story about being kidnapped by the Queen of Fairyland and enlist her help in securing his freedom.
Most novelists who retell the "Tam Lin" legend conveniently leave these early scenes out (although they may hint at them in subtle, non-overt ways; in Fire and Hemlock, a novel that departs from the original legend in manifold ways, beginning by recasting Janet as a solitary 10-year-old girl, there is an overarching sense of menace, with pedophilic/hebophilic appetites being ascribed to various minor characters -- and loss of innocence, broadly speaking, is a major theme).
Of course, different parts of this legend will speak more loudly to different people. Diana Wynne Jones, more lofty-minded than many, focuses in her retelling on the legend's representation of the "heroic ideal." Well, fortunately, there is room in the legend for us all. Wynne Jones is formidably well-read: the source material on which Fire and Hemlock is based not only includes the Child Ballads "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer," but also includes Homer's Odyssey, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Frazer's The Golden Bough, and dozens of other literary texts, encompassing the lofty, fat, and obscure. These literary forefathers figure into Fire and Hemlock in profound but pleasingly unobtrusive ways, leaving you with what seems on the surface to be nothing more than an unputdownable yarn. I read the whole book in a single sitting. The only part I really had a quibble with was the murky ending: after so much build-up, a novelist owes it to her readers to at least let them know what happened!!
June 9, 2010
At the age of seven, Polly accidentally wanders into a funeral and meets Thomas Lynn, a professional cellist who become intertwined in her life and emotions, both as the father figure that Polly, the child of a broken home, needs - and later - it seems - as the recipient of a teenage crush.
But, as a college student, Polly suddenly comes to the realization that she hasn't thought of Thomas in ages, although he was terribly important to her. And no one she talks to seems to remember him at all. Other things in her memory seem to be evidence of other discrepancies... is she going crazy? Or is something more sinister at work?
Remembering, she uncovers a bizarre network of plots and influence that all seems to center on "That House" where she saw the funeral, and the wealthy and strange family that inhabits it.
This is an ambitious and complicated book, and by far the darkest I've read by Jones, as she brings the Tam Lin legend into 1980's Britain. It's a YA book, but deals with difficult themes such as neglectful parents and relationships with both older men and pushy peers in a tasteful but emotionally unflinching way.
Although it's written in a very subtle way (nothing at all obviously supernatural or occult happens for nearly half the book), it's a tense, compelling read - hard to put down.
However, the end, where Polly finally uncovers the truth, and discovers what she must do, is very confusing - and, from reading other reviews, I'm not the only one to find it so.
We are told that Polly has figured out her course of action from reading about Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, but we aren't told exactly *what* she read, so her strange, logically-backward approach is rather mysterious. The reader just kinda has to say, "Okay, I guess that made sense for some reason.... not sure why!
But, as a college student, Polly suddenly comes to the realization that she hasn't thought of Thomas in ages, although he was terribly important to her. And no one she talks to seems to remember him at all. Other things in her memory seem to be evidence of other discrepancies... is she going crazy? Or is something more sinister at work?
Remembering, she uncovers a bizarre network of plots and influence that all seems to center on "That House" where she saw the funeral, and the wealthy and strange family that inhabits it.
This is an ambitious and complicated book, and by far the darkest I've read by Jones, as she brings the Tam Lin legend into 1980's Britain. It's a YA book, but deals with difficult themes such as neglectful parents and relationships with both older men and pushy peers in a tasteful but emotionally unflinching way.
Although it's written in a very subtle way (nothing at all obviously supernatural or occult happens for nearly half the book), it's a tense, compelling read - hard to put down.
However, the end, where Polly finally uncovers the truth, and discovers what she must do, is very confusing - and, from reading other reviews, I'm not the only one to find it so.
We are told that Polly has figured out her course of action from reading about Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, but we aren't told exactly *what* she read, so her strange, logically-backward approach is rather mysterious. The reader just kinda has to say, "Okay, I guess that made sense for some reason.... not sure why!
November 17, 2020
two separate thoughts:
one) my supervisor in my nightmarish final year of uni quoted a line from this to me in one of our many, many tearful meetings, "a sort of steely goodness came upon polly." i'd only vaguely remembered that conversation & had never looked for the quote until i found it here entirely by accident, but it felt v precious to read it and immediately recognise those words, hear them in her voice, & be v grateful that she'd given them to me.
two) this is an incredibly difficult book ! it's subtle & many-faced & slippery ! i found it v cruel, at times, & v generous at others, and never entirely solid ! it made me feel queasy and uncertain, and also charmed ! i'm at a bit of a loss !
(do feel absolutely certain of wynne jones' craft as a writer though -- she's so sensitive to the simultaneous perceptiveness and blindness of being a child, and to the wobbly, self-creating myth-making quality of growing up, and to all the strange, slippery qualities of memory and magic. it's v Good, it's just ! difficult to sit with !)
one) my supervisor in my nightmarish final year of uni quoted a line from this to me in one of our many, many tearful meetings, "a sort of steely goodness came upon polly." i'd only vaguely remembered that conversation & had never looked for the quote until i found it here entirely by accident, but it felt v precious to read it and immediately recognise those words, hear them in her voice, & be v grateful that she'd given them to me.
two) this is an incredibly difficult book ! it's subtle & many-faced & slippery ! i found it v cruel, at times, & v generous at others, and never entirely solid ! it made me feel queasy and uncertain, and also charmed ! i'm at a bit of a loss !
(do feel absolutely certain of wynne jones' craft as a writer though -- she's so sensitive to the simultaneous perceptiveness and blindness of being a child, and to the wobbly, self-creating myth-making quality of growing up, and to all the strange, slippery qualities of memory and magic. it's v Good, it's just ! difficult to sit with !)
February 21, 2018
Fire and Hemlock is one of my favourite books in the entire world, and I reviewed it (quite incoherently) five years ago, but not on here I think. Having just reread it quite thoroughly, now's the time!
19 year old Polly Whittacker is in her bedroom puzzling through a book she thinks she's read before - but all the stories in it are different. With this initial puzzle it soon becomes apparent she has two sets of memories of her childhood: one normal; of school, friends, parents, and Granny, and one of a funeral and meeting a man named Mr (later Tom) Lynn, the stories they made up together and the magical, and increasingly sinister, things that happened to him. I don't think it's too spoiler-heavy to say that Diana Wynne Jones drew heavily on the ballads Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, as well as a whole host of other stories and myths of Western literature (the myth of Cupid and Psyche, The Three Musketeers, T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets) to create without a doubt her finest and most complex work.
There are too many things to say about this novel! First, the way she writes about magic. Jones explicitly set out to write a novel “to write a book in which modern life and heroic mythical events approached one another so closely that they were nearly impossible to separate, and this is exactly what she's done, using child-Polly's unwavering acceptance of unfolding events. "You mustn't think it to bits." There's also a good scene, where Nina and Polly are in the Nativity play at school and alongside the lines they're meant to be saying, they have a whispered, furious conversation about Polly's parents, and Polly wishes she could tell Tom that was how their stories worked. And, I think, it's an apt deconstruction of how magic works in Diana Wynne Jones' literary world.
I also found myself admiring Polly and Tom. In writing Fire and Hemlock DWJ set out to write a female hero, one who in a 'straightforward and naive way' sets out on a odyssey of doing good and vanquishing evil, but who is also distinctively female and doesn't conform to what was then (young adult fiction the 1970s) a very rigidly male archetype. (It should also be clear at this point that this review is very heavily drawn from DWJ's essay about Fire and Hemlock, and it's very much worth reading. And I found myself very enthusiastically agreeing with her observations about - and rooting for - the persistence of the mythic, straightforward appeal of good vs. evil in children's fiction. Here, also, Toni Morrison's observations on the subject: “I just think goodness is more interesting. Evil is constant. You can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. But you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that's complicated.”) Polly is good, and she's interesting, and she's good because she's imaginative and loving, and she remains that way despite weathering hopeless, abusive parenting, and she's funny and insightful, more than she knows as a child. Her gift is the gift of knowing things.
Tom is a bit more hidden, I think. Partly because he's not the hero of this story, although there's certainly a parallel journey for him within the book, partly because of his polite passivity (which is part of his journey), and partly because almost right up to the end we only have child-Polly's perspective on him and adult-Polly's memories of interacting with him as a child. But there's a great deal of background DWJ provides about Tom's background (Charles Lynn, being in foster care, being sent to school, falling under Laurel's power) that one pieces together after having read the entire book. (Really there's quite a lot about sexuality DWJ just drops in the book that wouldn't necessarily be picked up by younger readers, but it's quite fascinating and satisfying. Pass it on, Ann Abraham is gay)
Which brings me to... LAUREL. Quite the most effective villain. She's terrifying. Wrapped in Laurel's character is a cipher for the themes of sexual power and control and abuse that dominate the novel, and even if she had been only mortal Laurel is far more evil than the human equivalents of Laurel (Ivy and Joanna Renton). I mean... Laurel is the lack of agency and consent personified, and the story probably makes a lot more sense if you allow for one reading of the novel to be about the long-lasting effects of abuse and trauma on the abused person. (Laurel, Ivy, Joanna. Tom, Seb, Leslie. As DWJ noted, the characters are arranged in threes and you could keep doing it forever.) And let's not even talk about Morton Leroy and the 'dark places under his eyes', because a) he's legitimately terrifying, and b) dark places? me too!
There has been A Lot on the Internet written about
At the end of the day, I love Fire and Hemlock. It's a bildungsroman and a romance, and a fantasy set in the real world with utmost naturalism. It's a story about good versus evil and a story about how that manifests in the fantastic. It's also a story about good versus evil and how that manifests in the non-fantastic world - power, control, abuse (people 'thinking in ways that were quite unreal' is probably the most polite-yet-accurate description of gaslighting there is), wealth, sexuality, friendship, love, consent. It's entirely to Diana Wynne Jones' credit that these are entirely intertwined, and one is not a tiresome, obvious metaphor for the other. And it's a story about imagination, creativity, art and passion, and the ways in which we save one another.
19 year old Polly Whittacker is in her bedroom puzzling through a book she thinks she's read before - but all the stories in it are different. With this initial puzzle it soon becomes apparent she has two sets of memories of her childhood: one normal; of school, friends, parents, and Granny, and one of a funeral and meeting a man named Mr (later Tom) Lynn, the stories they made up together and the magical, and increasingly sinister, things that happened to him. I don't think it's too spoiler-heavy to say that Diana Wynne Jones drew heavily on the ballads Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, as well as a whole host of other stories and myths of Western literature (the myth of Cupid and Psyche, The Three Musketeers, T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets) to create without a doubt her finest and most complex work.
There are too many things to say about this novel! First, the way she writes about magic. Jones explicitly set out to write a novel “to write a book in which modern life and heroic mythical events approached one another so closely that they were nearly impossible to separate, and this is exactly what she's done, using child-Polly's unwavering acceptance of unfolding events. "You mustn't think it to bits." There's also a good scene, where Nina and Polly are in the Nativity play at school and alongside the lines they're meant to be saying, they have a whispered, furious conversation about Polly's parents, and Polly wishes she could tell Tom that was how their stories worked. And, I think, it's an apt deconstruction of how magic works in Diana Wynne Jones' literary world.
I also found myself admiring Polly and Tom. In writing Fire and Hemlock DWJ set out to write a female hero, one who in a 'straightforward and naive way' sets out on a odyssey of doing good and vanquishing evil, but who is also distinctively female and doesn't conform to what was then (young adult fiction the 1970s) a very rigidly male archetype. (It should also be clear at this point that this review is very heavily drawn from DWJ's essay about Fire and Hemlock, and it's very much worth reading. And I found myself very enthusiastically agreeing with her observations about - and rooting for - the persistence of the mythic, straightforward appeal of good vs. evil in children's fiction. Here, also, Toni Morrison's observations on the subject: “I just think goodness is more interesting. Evil is constant. You can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. But you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that's complicated.”) Polly is good, and she's interesting, and she's good because she's imaginative and loving, and she remains that way despite weathering hopeless, abusive parenting, and she's funny and insightful, more than she knows as a child. Her gift is the gift of knowing things.
Tom is a bit more hidden, I think. Partly because he's not the hero of this story, although there's certainly a parallel journey for him within the book, partly because of his polite passivity (which is part of his journey), and partly because almost right up to the end we only have child-Polly's perspective on him and adult-Polly's memories of interacting with him as a child. But there's a great deal of background DWJ provides about Tom's background (Charles Lynn, being in foster care, being sent to school, falling under Laurel's power) that one pieces together after having read the entire book. (Really there's quite a lot about sexuality DWJ just drops in the book that wouldn't necessarily be picked up by younger readers, but it's quite fascinating and satisfying. Pass it on, Ann Abraham is gay)
Which brings me to... LAUREL. Quite the most effective villain. She's terrifying. Wrapped in Laurel's character is a cipher for the themes of sexual power and control and abuse that dominate the novel, and even if she had been only mortal Laurel is far more evil than the human equivalents of Laurel (Ivy and Joanna Renton). I mean... Laurel is the lack of agency and consent personified, and the story probably makes a lot more sense if you allow for one reading of the novel to be about the long-lasting effects of abuse and trauma on the abused person. (Laurel, Ivy, Joanna. Tom, Seb, Leslie. As DWJ noted, the characters are arranged in threes and you could keep doing it forever.) And let's not even talk about Morton Leroy and the 'dark places under his eyes', because a) he's legitimately terrifying, and b) dark places? me too!
There has been A Lot on the Internet written about
At the end of the day, I love Fire and Hemlock. It's a bildungsroman and a romance, and a fantasy set in the real world with utmost naturalism. It's a story about good versus evil and a story about how that manifests in the fantastic. It's also a story about good versus evil and how that manifests in the non-fantastic world - power, control, abuse (people 'thinking in ways that were quite unreal' is probably the most polite-yet-accurate description of gaslighting there is), wealth, sexuality, friendship, love, consent. It's entirely to Diana Wynne Jones' credit that these are entirely intertwined, and one is not a tiresome, obvious metaphor for the other. And it's a story about imagination, creativity, art and passion, and the ways in which we save one another.
December 15, 2007
Explores in a very meta way the mythical trope of hero figures through the interactions of a young girl Polly and a man called Thomas Lynn whom she befriends at a funeral being held at the mysterious neighbouring manor house one Halloween. References to Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer and T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets abound and a familiarity with these should enlighten an understanding of the plot, particularly the ending which is famed for its confusing and oblique denouement, but is not essential to enjoying the mysterious magic surrounding Tom and Polly's adventures together.
For me, this book epitomises the lone overarching problem I have with Wynne Jones' writing and that is the fast pacing of her conclusions; a fault made obvious by the furious application of obscure (for my illiterate brain) and dense allusion in the final chapters of Fire and Hemlock. The speed with which she ties up loose story lines after the climax and her realignment of her characters' lives after these events often occur in a way that leaves me unsatisfied with what feels like a slightly incomplete novel. Having said that, Fire and Hemlock for me has enough to outweigh this flaw in the brilliance of Jones' writing - the complexity of Polly's maturation occurring concurrently with an equally complex quest, the affection she makes you feel for these characters through Jones' wit and acutely drawn familiarity, and that flair she has for writing magical situations within completely mundane settings which radiate clearly in your imagination with surreal wonder and believability. These are common effects of Jones' writing that culminated in a best ever showing here in this book.
For me, this book epitomises the lone overarching problem I have with Wynne Jones' writing and that is the fast pacing of her conclusions; a fault made obvious by the furious application of obscure (for my illiterate brain) and dense allusion in the final chapters of Fire and Hemlock. The speed with which she ties up loose story lines after the climax and her realignment of her characters' lives after these events often occur in a way that leaves me unsatisfied with what feels like a slightly incomplete novel. Having said that, Fire and Hemlock for me has enough to outweigh this flaw in the brilliance of Jones' writing - the complexity of Polly's maturation occurring concurrently with an equally complex quest, the affection she makes you feel for these characters through Jones' wit and acutely drawn familiarity, and that flair she has for writing magical situations within completely mundane settings which radiate clearly in your imagination with surreal wonder and believability. These are common effects of Jones' writing that culminated in a best ever showing here in this book.
June 2, 2015
Diana Wynne Jones is my absolute favourite children's author, and this is my absolute favourite of her books. However, the first time I read this, probably at around age nine or ten, I was monumentally confused by everything about the plot, though everything else about the book was good enough to make up for it. At the time I thought I'd re-read it again when I was older and I'd understand it better because I would be smarter, but I kept re-reading it periodically and I still didn't get it. After a while I got sick of all this re-reading and still not understanding so I made a conscious decision for this book to not be my favourite any more and I didn't read it for a few years.
But then when I re-read it just recently, things were much clearer! Not entirely clear, but I have hope for the future. I still love this book. I am pathologically unable to not love this book.
But then when I re-read it just recently, things were much clearer! Not entirely clear, but I have hope for the future. I still love this book. I am pathologically unable to not love this book.
November 23, 2012
I started reading this last night when I needed something to help me fall asleep. At 4:30 a.m., I finished it. Today, my brain is dead because I stayed up all last night reading this amazing, awesome book and so now I have no substantive review because I am braindead. But it was worth it! So worth it! Really, an excellent book. Also, this may be my very favorite explicit engagement with a myth in ya. Basically, what I'm saying is, if you follow me because you think you share some taste in genre fiction, and you haven't read this book already, do yourself a favor and get your hands on it. Also? The aging in this book is unlike anything I have ever read before and his brilliant.
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