Cart and Cwidder (Dalemark Quartet, Vol. 1) [Hardcover]

Diana Wynne Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1977

When their father, a traveling minstrel, is killed, three children involved in rebellion and intrigue inherit a lute-like cwidder with more than musical powers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this fantasy adventure set in mystical Dalemark, the children of a murdered gypsy begin an investigation into their father's death that has far-reaching consequences. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Diana Wynne Jones was raised in the village of Thaxted, in Essex, England. She has been a compulsive storyteller for as long as she can remember enjoying most ardently those tales dealing with witches, hobgoblins, and the like. Ms. Jones lives in Bristol, England, with her husband, a professor of English at Bristol University. They have three sons and two granddaughters. In Her Own Words...

"I decided to be a writer at the age of eight, but I did not receive any encouragement in this ambition until thirty years later. I think this ambition was fired-or perhaps exacerbated is a better word-by early marginal contacts with the Great, when we were evacuated to the English Lakes during the war. The house we were in had belonged to Ruskin's secretary and had also been the home of the children in the books of Arthur Ransome. One day, finding I had no paper to draw on, I stole from the attic a stack of exquisite flower-drawings, almost certainly by Ruskin himself, and proceeded to rub them out. I was punished for this. Soon after, we children offended Arthur Ransome by making a noise on the shore beside his houseboat. He complained. So likewise did Beatrix Potter, who lived nearby. It struck me then that the Great were remarkably touchy and unpleasant (even if, in Ruskin's case, it was posthumous), and I thought I would like to be the same, without the unpleasantness.

"I started writing children's books when we moved to a village in Essex where there were almost no books. The main activities there were hand-weaving, hand-making pottery, and singing madrigals, for none of which I had either taste or talent. So, in intervals between trying to haunt the church and sitting on roofs hoping to learn to fly, I wrote enormous epic adventure stories which I read to my sisters instead of the real books we did not have. This writing was stopped, though, when it was decided I must be coached to go to University. A local philosopher was engaged to teach me Greek and philosophy in exchange for a dollhouse (my family never did things normally), and I eventually got a place at Oxford.

"At this stage, despite attending lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, I did not expect to be writing fantasy. But that was what I started to write when I was married and had children of my own. It was what they liked best. But small children do not allow you the use of your brain. They used to jump on my feet to stop me thinking. And I had not realized how much I needed to teach myself about writing. I took years to learn, and it was not until my youngest child began school that I was able to produce a book which a publisher did not send straight back.

"As soon as my books began to be published, they started coming true. Fantastic things that I thought I had made up keep happening to me. The most spectacular was Drowned Ammet. The first time I went on a boat after writing that book, an island grew up out of the sea and stranded us. This sort of thing, combined with the fact that I have a travel jinx, means that my life is never dull."

Diana Wynne Jones is the author of many highly praised books for young readers, as well as three plays for children and a novel for adults. She lives in Bristol, England, with her husband, a professor of English at Bristol University. They have three sons.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 193 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (February 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689305567
• ISBN-13: 978-0689305566
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,893,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Diana Wynne Jones spent her childhood in Essex and has been writing fantasy novels for children since 1973. With her unique combination of magic, humour and imagination, she has been enthralling children and adults with her work ever since. She won the Guardian Award in 1977 with Charmed Life, was runner-up for the Children's Book Award in 1981, and was twice runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. She is married with three sons, and lives in Bristol with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very satisfying coming-of-age fantasy., December 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cart and Cwidder (Dalemark Quartet, Book 1) (No 5) (Hardcover)

Moril is a dreamy and contemplative boy, with "his head in the clouds" most of the time. He loves the stories of the old and glorious days, when big doings were about, which his father, a well-known singer, tells often. Little does he know what his future holds, just around the corner.

This is a tale of unexpected magic, immersed in plenty of action. The old mandolin-like cwidder that Moril's father played, turns out to be more than just a musical instrument in Moril's hands. And just in the nick of time...

As always, Jones gives us a cast of characters that become instantly familiar and believable. The tale is a warm and believable human drama, mixed judiciously with magic, and a young person's budding maturity. Beginning as an engaging adventure, the book turns into a compelling page-turner, with a wonderfully complex and unpredictable ending. Great stuff for an imaginative young reader.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid, readable, involving, but not spectacular, June 27, 2001

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cart and Cwidder (Dalemark Quartet, Vol. 1) (Paperback)

Cart and Cwidder is the first of Diana Wynne Jones' Dalemark books, which run to four volumes. Dalemark is a fairly obvious version of Wales. Indeed, the book reminded me a bit of Lloyd Alexander, though not the Prydain books (set in a version of Wales), but rather the Westmark books, as they share, very roughly, tech level, and an interest in politics.

This book concerns an 11-year old boy named Moril, a musician traveling with his family. They earn their money by stopping at towns and villages and playing songs. They also pass news among the people of Dalemark, and take passengers : they and other musicians are the only people who regularly travel between the northern and southern parts of the land, which are at the point of war. The south in particular is being severely repressed by the Earls (there has been no King for some time). Moril's family consists of their jolly father Clennen, their beautiful, aristocratic mother Lenina, the talented 15-year old songwriter son Dagner, and a 12-year old girl, Brid, in addition to Moril. The title refers to the cart they live and travel in, and to the main musical instruments they use, "cwidders", which seem guitar-like, and one of which may have magical powers.

On the journey in question, they pick up a rather mysterious traveller, Kialan, a boy of roughly Dagner's age. He has a tendency to disappear when they pass through villages. Then, near the castle of Lenina's former fiance, some men show up and murder Clennen. Abruptly, Lenina heads to her ex-fiance's house, as he has long promised to marry her if she is ever free. But the children recognize one of the murderers as a guest at the house, and they decide to head on their own to the North. On their way, they find more trouble, and eventually they learn that war is closer to hand than they thought. Can it be stopped?

It's very readable and involving -- I'm not sure Jones can be other than readable and involving. But it shares with much YA fantasy a certain thinness in the background. Her best work, such as _Fire and Hemlock_, seems much more completely imagined, more complex in characterization, theme, and morality. This book is fun, and not without real tension and interesting characters, but it seems minor compared to my favorites among her work. I will be buying the rest of the Dalemark books, however.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Original, character-driven fantasy, March 8, 2002

By 

Royce E. Buehler "figvine" (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cart and Cwidder (Dalemark Quartet, Vol. 1) (Paperback)

In the Dalemark Quartet, of which this is the first volume, Diana Wynne Jones is attempting something fresh and ambitious. Unlike the standard fantasy series, in which each volume follows the continuing adventures of a single cast of characters - a series of tunes played on the same set of instruments - this one really is designed as a "quartet". Each of the first three books is all but independent of the rest, told in its own distinct voice. They interlock in many ways, but in subtle ones - common geography, a set of family names that link with the long history of Dalemark and its peculiar "gods", known in Dalemark as the Undying. Only halfway through the third book does the depth of the historical and the very original mythological patterns begin to come into focus. The "quartet" of voices - the travelling singer Moril in this book, the sailor's apprentice Mitt in the second, the weaver Cennoreth in the third, and the time travelling teen Maewen in the last - are neatly balanced. The two boys are from the Dalemark's "present," an age of political intrigues with a three musketeers flavor, and the girls are from the far past and the not so far future. One of each gender is from the North, the other from the South, and the ultimate task facing them all is to reunite the torn land under a single monarch.

Each of the first three volumes on its own comprises a satisfying story, if a bit open-ended. Cart and Cwidder is the most successful as a stand-alone story. The lute-like cwidder that Moril's father plays for a living as the family's gipsy cart wends through Dalemark's towns gradually discloses its magical powers, but it's the play of personalities that will keep you turning the pages.

There's the daydreaming Moril, his father Clennen, the jovial showman, his older brother Dagner, brimming with talent but painfully shy, his perceptive and sharp-tongued sister Brid, their mysteriously quiet high-born mother Lenina, and an elusive paying passenger whose humility seems like mockery. All these vivid first impressions are real, but they all turn out to be just surface manifestations of the deeper waters running through every member of the troupe.

You'll want to hear more about Moril's adventures when you finish Cart and Cwidder. Be advised that you'll have to lay your eagerness aside. All the members of the quartet will be brought together again in the long fourth volume, where Moril's voice will carry only a little of the melody; and there are three solos to be played in full before the final harmonizing.