Diana Wynne Jones - Charmed Life and Archer's Goon

          I am coming in under the wire, just, for Diana Wynne Jones reading month.  During this month I read two of her children's fantasy novels:  Charmed Life, and Archer's Goon.
                                                               

Charmed Life is the story of Gwendolen Chant and her younger brother Eric, known as Cat.  Gwendolen is a strong witch.  Cat has none.  Their parents are dead and they are living with the kind strangers in their home village,  and come across some letter from Chrestomanci Chant to their father, while looking for something to pay for magic lessons for Gwendolen.  Chrestomanci is a famous powerful wizard, it turns out.  And a relative of theirs.  Chrestomaci is contacted by Gwendolen and her creepy wizard friends, and the next thing, Gwendolen and Cat are taken to Chrestomanci's home to live.  They are both given magic lessons (as well as ordinary school lessons), and while Gwendolen is convinced she is going to be a powerful sorceress one day, Cat is showing no signs of magic at all.   He does however, seem to have a charmed life, which through the story is slowly revealed to be much more than anyone thought.  Alternate universes, other selves, all play a part in this fun, and funny, story about how Cat learns who he is.

Charmed Life was a re-read for me, and it has been many years since I read it first.  My 24 year old son was around 10 when I read it, before I gave it to him to read then.  I was trying to interest him in reading something.  He was obsessed with dinosaurs and Star Wars then.  It was difficult to find a children's fantasy book for his age, from 8-12, at that time.  And it had to be fantasy, he wasn't going to read anything else.  To my surprise, he liked it, and he read the others in the Chrestomanci series.  He went on to read more in the fantasy world, and I credit Charmed Life for being the door that opened reading for him.  He had a reading disability, which all of my children have also, in varying degrees.  As the other two grow older, they too will have Charmed Life put into their hands.

Diana Wynne Jones is that kind of writer, some one who makes her characters real, and the family situations are always funny and very realistic, and the magic is of the kind that everyone wishes they had,when they are young.  A perfect book for every child, I think.
                           
                                                              
Archer's Goon is set in the real world also - I think this is part of the real charm of Jones's novels.  Her children's books (other than the Dale Quartet) are set in the modern world, and magic exists without extra explanation.  It simply is.  Archer's Goon is set in England, though it is hard to know if it is a real town.  It opens with a large man appearing at the Sykes household, demanding payment of words written by Howard's father.  The words were payment to a man named Archer, and the Goon was there to get the payment as it had gone missing. Why is Mr Sykes writing payment?  For what?  Who is Archer?  Who is the Goon?  Howard's world is about to be turned upside down as he discovers that nothing in this world is as it appears, especially people.  Time is important in this novel, the past and the future, as Howard discovers that  Archer is part of  a group who control the town, and want to rule the world. This was the first time I read Archer's Goon, and I really enjoyed it.  Howard's family made me laugh, and the situations they find themselves in as they try to find who is in control - and how Mr Syke's words are the key - is fun and unconventional.  This was nominated for the Best Novel 1985 World Fantasy Award, and rightly so.  It is a fantasy full of wonderful inventiveness, and never loses track of the meaning of family, and love.  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Diana Wynne Jones month:


I am glad that I finally was able to participate in Diana Wynne Jones month, held by Kristen at We Be Reading for the second year. All month Kristen has posted about Diana, her books, and has had several guest posts from bloggers about their favourite Diana Wynne Jones books, or memories.  Here is a link to several of the books Kristen read in March.  This is an excellent resource for finding more about Diana Wynne Jones, and the wonderful legacy she has left us all.  Thanks to Kristen for hosting this challenge again.

I have read some books by Diana Wynne Jones:  Howl's Moving Castle and Witch Week are  among my favourites;   Fire and Hemlock is very good, as is Time of  the Ghost.  I have Hexwood, and Pinhoe's Egg, The Merlin Conspiracy, and Enchanted Glass on my shelf, to read.  One I want to get is The Dark Lord of Derkholm, reviewed here by Gavin at Page 247.

The breadth and width of Wynne Jones writing is breathtaking.  She wrote mostly fantasy, and changed children's literature forever.  If you haven't read her, then she is perfect for the Once Upon a Time Challenge currently taking place over at Stainless Steel Droppings.  If you have read her, then you will know that fantasy lost a wonderful writer when she died two years ago. She is sadly missed.  There are many wonderful writers now in children's fantasy, as well as young adult, and many of them owe a debt to the trail blazed by Diana Wynne Jones.

This is not to say she is or was the only good writer in children's fantasy books back in the 1970's and 80's.  Susan Cooper was writing the Dark is Rising series, Alan Garner had written his Weirdstone series, Ursula K. LeGuin had written the Earthsea  trilogy, there was the Pern series  by Anne McCaffrey, and Madeleine L'Engle had Wind in the Door.  After that, there was little.  So the fantasy world for children has really changed since then.  All of these writers laid the way for the current richness of children's fantasy literature that we are currently enjoying.  But there is something in each of these for me that makes each of them each stand out for me, a tone in their writing that always makes it original, fresh, and a work that I can return to again and again.  I think Diana Wynne Jones will be among these in children's books for me.

 Whether you want to read something new in fantasy, or reread something delightful, charming and very often moving, pick up one of her books, and get ready for a treat.

Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Day

To begin with, Nymeth wrote a most amazing post about why she reads fantasy, here. It really is worth reading. It explains a lot about what I believe about fantasy reading and writing, and why it is worthy to be called literature.

It led me to wonder why we still feel a need to defend ourselves for reading fantasy. It's been 50 years since Lord of the Rings was published, and people who read fantasy are still looked down upon. Why is that? Why do I feel that reading a book with elves on the cover is somehow less than reading an English classic? Because sometimes I do. And I don't like it. Is it the idea that it's escapist literature, as Nymeth says, and so it can't be taken seriously as representing the truth about us? Why do we need fantasy literature?

I believe that we do need fantasy in our lives. I have mentioned on past posts that I think fantasy is retelling myths for us in the modern world. A sub-group of fairy tales and myths, if you like. Those original myths we all grew up on, the world over, how the world was created, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, dragons - at its core, fantasy is about how we imagine the world, and our place in the world. We have always needed fantasy, even if we don't know how to respect it. I think that is because somewhere deep inside we also fear fantasy because it seeks to tell the truth about our lives, about human beings and their potential, no matter what circumstances they find themselves in. Fantasy offers us in all our good and bad in every world possibly imagined. That is part of it's power. We hold a mirror up to ourselves, through fantasy. I think people who are afraid of fantasy, are afraid of imagining how things could be different. As Nymeth says, we are not hobbits, but hobbits are us as they experience war for the first time. The power to imagine ourselves differently, and imagine our lives differently, is the power that any who seek to control a person and society, fears the most.

Also as Nymeth also points out, not all fantasy is good. She says, and I agree, not all books in any type of literature are good, either! Every kind of fiction has its strengths and its weaknesses. One of the worst weaknesses of fantasy is when the writer fails to imagine anything unique to themselves. So they write what's gone before, and the fantasy falls flat. This could be said of every book ever written, of course: if something of the writer finds its way into the book, then it has a seed of genuinesss about it that makes it worth seeking out, even if it's not very good. Fantasy gives us so many hundreds of ways of bringing that genuiness out - all that's needed other than writing talent, is the power to imagine.

So all that being said, maybe next time I'm reading a book with elves on the front cover, I'll think back to their fairy tale origins and when someone rolls their eyes at me for wasting my time over a book like 'that', I'll reply: "This is storytelling at its best! You don't know what you're missing!"

Now, Nymeth didn't cover science fiction and I'd like to say a few words in its defense. Why read science fiction? What does gravity have to do with being human? Well, for one thing, if we didn't have gravity, we'd all be floating in the universe......scratch that, because none of this - life on earth - would exist. That doesn't mean science fiction is as necessary as gravity! Though it makes a fun analogy.....what it does mean is that science fiction is about us in space. "Ooh, boring", the woman clerk, or the neighbor who doesn't read, might say. "Why do you read that stuff?" Well, I read science fiction because I'm curious about the universe, and I really think that one day we can get a ship up long enough to explore the stars. I think we have to, because the earth isn't big enough to contain all that humans can be.

The same ability is needed to imagine us in space, as is needed to imagine alternate worlds as we do in fantasy. Only space is all around us, we can see the stars with our own eyes. Haven't you looked up in the night sky, and just wondered: What's up there? What's it like? How would it be to be able to travel from star to star? Now I know that will lead to somewhat technical discussions about the distance involved and the speed of light and other things that I can't get my mind to grasp. So I confess that I usually skip over the techno stuff. What I like, is imagining us on the space ships, and what happens to us there, because all our problems and all our beliefs and all our good qualities come with us there, too. I like science fiction because it offers us a possible future, many possible futures, as many futures as we can imagine them.

I know fantasy and science fiction isn't everyone's choice of books. But for those of us who love them, I would wish that the rest of the literary world would stop looking down at us, and greet us as equals. Because once we have tamed the earth (and that would learning how to live on here in a way that keeps the earth alive and healthy), the stars will still be waiting to be explored. And where will we look for the ideas on how to get there? You're right. Science fiction. Many of the writers of science fiction have science degrees. So the next time someone sniffs at your rocket-ship covered book, you can tell them, "This is serious well-thought-out science." Or something like that.

And I can't, and I won't, imagine a world without Star Trek!

I do prefer fantasy to science fiction, and I think that both are necessary forms of literature. As necessary as breathing, in fact.

Why do you read fantasy and/or science fiction? How do you celebrate it in your life?