Aidan Cain is a boy in need of magical assistance. After the death of his grandmother, he finds himself stalked by sinister creatures. Traveling to the town of Melstone to seek the protection of a powerful sorcerer, Aidan finds the wizard's bumbling grandson Andrew now in charge. Together with a cast of eccentric characters, the two must untangle the mysterious forces that threaten both Aidan and Melstone. The key is a pair of magical colored windows that channel the power of other worlds through their enchanted glass.
Diana Wynne Jones has written approximately 50 books, most of which are fantasy for young people. They frequently focus on the theme of gifted children who have to make a break from abusive or manipulative family members to develop their gifts on their own. Often whimsical, occasionally spooky, and frequently humorous, her novels often deal with a folksy magic with ordinary-seeming people caring for each other and taking responsibility for their world. ENCHANTED GLASS is no exception to this theme.
Neither Aidan nor Andrew has much practice using magic. Aidan has a magic wallet where money appears when he most needs it and a propensity for making friends. Andrew knows he possesses a "field of care," but it is unclear to him how far its boundaries extend or what he must do to maintain it. They are joined by several other characters with dubious magical abilities: a gardener who seems to have a gift for growing enormous and nasty-tasting vegetables, a former jockey with a knack for growing roses, and a passive-aggressive housekeeper who has a habit of bending people to her will. While initially many of these characters and their habits seem irritating or obstructive, ultimately they provide the backbone of Melstone's magical community and are the best weapon against the ancient and formidable foe that seeks to claim Aidan for its own.
As the town prepares for its annual fair, the magical mayhem spreads. Magical doubles, or "counterparts," start appearing. Aidan makes friends with a weredog and a giant called Groil who eats all the gardener's giant-sized vegetables. People compete with handicrafts and homegrown fare, not realizing that these are the very things that define their community and help to protect their homes. What begins with a generations-old boundary dispute ends with Aidan finding a place to call his own.
ENCHANTED GLASS, like many of Diana Wynne Jones's books, accepts the idea of magical heritage while also refusing to believe that the accident of one's parents must determine one's future. In the scene where Aidan first looks through one of the panes of the magical windows, he hears a voice ask, "What is it you need?" Aidan answers that he needs to be safe: "People keep coming after me." The voice tells him that steps have already been taken to ensure his safety. Then the voice asks if there is anything else he needs: "Have you no ambitions?" Aidan suddenly realizes, "I want to be wise, like Gran and Andrew, and have my own field-of-care and write books about all the amazing things I find out and --- and fix things magically that can't be fixed any other way..."
I've always felt that Jones's books reach for that place --- in many children and for some adults --- that can't be fixed in any other way. Her novels have always seemed to contain lessons on how to recover from the destructive and all-too-common violence that often comes --- many times unintentionally --- from the people who are supposed to love and protect us the most. Her characters are able to reach out to that magic, "one of the great forces of the universe that had come into being right at the beginning, along with gravity and the force that held atoms together, strong as or stronger than any force there..." and heal the things that have been broken. It is thus an apt metaphor that the magic in this book is represented both by very ordinary caretaking activities that create a town, a neighborhood, and a home, and by something as delicate and fragile as colored glass.
Diana Wynne Jones has been seriously ill, and many of her fans are worried that ENCHANTED GLASS will be her last book. It's impossible for me to think of this as her last work. It's equally impossible for me to think of it standing separate from all the other novels she has written. While a stand-alone title, it is also part and parcel of a life's work: books that continue to be an enormous gift to readers both young and old.
