Book Review

[kenjari]

Howl's Moving Castle
by Diana Wynne Jones

This is another one of those YA fantasy classics that I somehow missed when I was of the proper age. Since I love the Miyazaki film version, I thought it would be a good idea to read the book and catch up on what I had missed when I was younger.
I am both incredibly sad that I missed out on this book when I was younger and incredibly happy that I have finally gotten around to reading it: Howl's Moving Castle was fantastic, and I had such a great time reading it. It's utterly charming, and all the characters are very interesting. I love the way Jones gives them all rather striking flaws without ever decreasing their basic likeability. Howl is horribly vain, cowardly, and flighty yet also very kind and clever; Sophie is stubborn and cantankerous yet also brave and good; Calcifer is moody yet steadfast and helpful. I was also impressed with the way Sophie's curse of agedness helps her to grow from a passive pushover to a strong-willed and formidable woman who can enact great changes on those around her through both ordinary actions and a nascent magical talent. One of the beauties and charms of the book is the way Jones' writing is absolutely seamless and engaging. It's not that the character development, clever plotting, and wonderful use of fairy-tale tropes isn't clear and present, it's that you can't see Jones doing it - it's all just there, woven together into a perfect whole.

Comments

[sovay]

This is another one of those YA fantasy classics that I somehow missed when I was of the proper age. Since I love the Miyazaki film version, I thought it would be a good idea to read the book and catch up on what I had missed when I was younger.

Whereas it's one of the first novels I can remember reading, along with The Lives of Christopher Chant and The Last Unicorn; Diana Wynne Jones is almost single-handedly responsible for my inability to be surprised by any revelation of identity at the end of a book. (Patricia McKillip is responsible for the rest.) It's also one of the books I read so young, it took me years to notice how strange it is—not just the fairy-tale deconstruction, which I encountered mostly in reverse order to the fairy tales themselves, but the reversal of world and otherworld; it worked on me like Sophie, so that fire demons and moving castles were perfectly ordinary to me, but I really think I was in college before I realized the "strange, slightly shiny paper . . . printed in bold letters, but they were slightly gray and blurred, and there were gray blurs, like retreating stormclouds, round all the edges" was a photocopy. It went completely over my head when I was seven that Howl might be a big-shot magician in Ingary, but in Wales he's an unemployed Ph.D. who reads Tolkien and leaves his car in his sister's garage. And that this is mostly irrelevant the story, although in another book it might have been the primary plot. (The obvious backstory is that he was studying magic for his graduate degree when he blew himself somehow into Ingary and turned out to have a knack for the reality of it. I love that this never once comes up.) And of course I thought Diana Wynne Jones was John Donne until I was in middle or high school. Can you tell I imprinted on this book so hard?

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Can you tell I imprinted on this book so hard?
Oh, yes. :) I can't help but think how lucky you are that this was so.
I really loved the world-otherworld reversal, too. Her handling of it is terrific in that she leaves so much for the reader to discover, instead of offering explanations.
Other Kenjari and I plan on re-watching the Miyazaki film on Friday night (along with completely incongruous Indian take-out) - I hope I can provide a coherent and useful comparison of the two versions. Would you like to join us?