Customer Reviews

Fire and Hemlock

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I had to give this book five stars, even though it isn't perfect. The plot is confusing at times, with holes that could have been filled in if the author had done some tweaking. Another drawback is that some of the best characters--like the quartet--tend to be given short shrift. Yet even with these drawbacks, a fantasy of this calibre is not likely to come along often enough so as to be taken for granted. Hence the five stars.

As I mentioned above, there are plot holes, but this is a side effect of the chief beauty of this book: its mystery. The story is set in our world--1980's England, to be exact--and the fantasy elements are laid on in subtle nuances of depth and detail. A slight otherworldly quality--almost too subtle to be detected--mars an otherwise commonplace funeral. Everyday events take on the significance of revelations. The magic itself is of the type that more often than not creeps at the edges of things, pervading the story with an atmosphere that is by turns haunting, fascinating, and occasionally hilarious.

With a deft hand the author weaves the ballad of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer together with the story a young girl, and soon enough the magic of legend and her mundane life intertwine. Polly is a "hero" in more than one sense: not only by virtue of her role as it is projected in the ballad, but also due to her struggles to cope with an increasingly unbearable living situation. It is not only the darkness of evil magic that Polly must eventually face, but also its everyday counterpart: the divorce and callous negligence of her parents.

The cast of characters and their relationships are wonderful, down to every last individual; it is their believability and richness that makes this book impossible to put down. There is also a refreshing realism in their interactions that plays a necessary counterpoint to the otherwise murky strangeness of the atmosphere. Children grow to adulthood as we watch them, their friendships and alliances change; the relationship between Polly and Tom Lynn grows ever more complex, undergoing constant shifts and adjustments.

You will find this book in the Young Adult section, but most readers of fantasy know that this is no reason to be put off. Diana Wynne Jones is one of the best YA fantasy writers around, and this is one of her darkest, deepest, and most complex books. You may need to reread it to fully understand what has happened by the somewhat bewildering conclusion--but if you enjoy it the first time, that should not be a chore, but a pleasure.

"Fire and Hemlock" is one of the newly reprinted books by Diana Wynne-Jones, and definitely worth a read. This is one of those books that so easily could have turned into cheeze, or a mediocre modern-fantasy tale devoid of magic. Instead, virtually every word and event is permeated with subtlely fantastical elements.

The tale starts when nineteen-year-old Polly, looking at a "fire and hemlock" picture, suddenly remembers her old friend Thomas Lynn -- the problem is, how could she have forgotten him? And why doesn't anybody else remember him? Shifting back in time, we are shown how the preadolescent Polly wandered into a funeral, and met the quiet, mild-mannered Lynn there.

He remains a presence, through letters and occasional meetings, all throughout her teenage years. The two play a fantasy game through their letters -- but then Polly starts seeing it reflected in reality. To make things worse, Lynn's strangely sinister ex-wife seems to have a strange power over him. But what it is? Who is she? And how can Polly free Lynn before it's too late?

This is, in places, not an easy book to read; not everyone in it has a happy ending, and Polly's life is in some ways not a happy one. We see her seesawing between her paranoid mother, who believes that everyone is trying to keep secrets from her (almost to the point of mental illness); her father, who seems absorbed in his stepfamily; and her kindly grandmother who is one of the few stable points in her life. Jones never downplays the real pains of adolescence; there is no cheap "teen angst" here. Rather, we have Polly growing and maturing, recognizing the harsher parts of reality. One of the most striking parts of the book is when we are shown how shallow and pathetic one of Polly's former friends is, someone who previously seemed bright and vivacious. Her embarrassment when coming to her father's, her shock when her mother ships her out, and her intermittent feelings of loneliness and playfulness are all well-drawn and excellently written.

With a minimum of effort, Jones provides good "atmosphere" for the supporting characters as well, especially Lynn. He's actually present in relatively little of the novel, but his presence permeates it. The grandmother is nice, as are the friends -- both past and present -- of Polly's; they range from being shallow and petty to quieter, but more loyal.

This book is not as humorous as some of her other novels, though there is a sly jab at Tolkien imitators in one of the letters from Lynn. There is also some slightly more mature material, in a VERY mild joke by a slutty classmate, and the reference to a friend of Polly's briefly running off with a businessman. That, and the no-happily-ever-after vision of divorce.

Why four stars? Well, because I simply could not understand how things happened at the climax. I reread those last chapters six times, and was no closer at the end to understanding what the heck happened there. It is, however, outstandingly written. The descriptions are lush and full of magic.

Fans of multilayered fantasy, "Tam Lin", and a solid coming-of-age story will want to check this out.

"Fire and Hemlock" is possibly Diana Wynne Jones's most complex and subtle novel, and it's certainly not for the younger readers who've enjoyed her most famous work, the "Chrestomanci" novels. It is most basically described as a retelling of the Tam Lin/Thomas the Rhymer ballads, set in 1980's England over a nine-year period. Needless to say, it is dense and complicated, filled with hidden meaning, metaphor and symbolism where two threads of life are wound together to make an intricate whole.

Told predominantly in flashback sequences, we begin when nineteen-year-old Polly Whittacker is packing to go to college when her memory begins to stir. Her recollections of a book and a picture on the wall are not as she remembers them, and only when she concentrates and really begins to think does she realise that she seems to have two sets of memories - one of a mundane school life, and one that is filled with the mysterious and supernatural: all centred around a man named Tom Lynn.

She begins to re-follow this thread of her life, beginning with her meeting with Tom Lynn when she accidentally joins a funeral at the grand Hunsdon House held by the strange Leroy family. Pursuing the strange friendship, Polly and Tom make up stories where they exist as superheroes named Tom Piper and Hero and meet many times to discuss this sense of reality they dub `Nowhere'. But something strange begins to happen - these stories of theirs have a way of becoming true, and it all seems to have something to do with Tom's sinister ex-wife Laurel and her designs for Tom and Polly.

Throughout this however, Polly also must deal with the somewhat crazy exploits of her school-friend Nina and the selfish actions of her divorcee parents: the negligence of her father and the utter self-delusion of her mother who blames everybody but herself for her problems. Also is the attentions of two young boys - the sulky Sebastian and the roughish Leslie, both of which have links to the Leroy family and their grim family heritage.

To get the most out of "Fire and Hemlock" you must be a patient and careful reader - I'd even go so far as to say it's necessary to read the book twice to fully understand it. There are so many details and plot threads that it's difficult to keep track of them all, especially when you consider all the action is melded with a different set of memories that Polly must sort out in her mind as the book goes on (not counting the range of stories that she and Tom make up!).

The characters are as usual wonderfully and vividly created and interact realistically with each other. Polly's grandmother in particular is a woman worth knowing, but the flamboyant Nina, the sullen Sebastian and the sad, haunted Tom are also beautifully presented. However, the one character I couldn't really warm up to was Polly herself - for reasons more instinctive than reasonable, I just couldn't really like her that much, and I'm afraid I'm not really sure why.

"Fire and Hemlock" is also the author's most descriptive book - usually she doesn't bother to much with details, but in this case she takes the time to carefully lay the setting, resulting in an evocative and interesting atmosphere whether it be the spookiness of Hunsdon House or the sterile cleanness of Polly's father's apartment.

The main problem with this book is that it is incredibly complicated: even after three reads I'm still a little baffled as to how and why certain things happened - the last chapter in particular is very ambiguous and unsatisfactory in its wrap up concerning Polly and her relationships with the other characters. Although she does explain certain mysteries, they are usual explained in just a few sentences which are easy to miss or not understand properly. This is rather frustrating since it's a beautiful novel which deserves to be savoured and understood - yet it's extremely difficult to do just this thanks to the lack of cohesiveness.

As a sidenote, this novel along with "Howl's Moving Castle" are Diana Wynne Jones's favourite works - with that in mind it pays to read it carefully. All in all, it is one of DWJ's most challenging books, but ultimately one of the most intelligent, intriguing and rewarding.

Okay, I confess - though I read much of Diana Wynne Jones's oeuvre in middle and junior high school, I'd almost forgotten about her books until I went into Harry withdrawal post-Goblet. How stupid of me - this is a wonderful writer whose books are definitely not just for kids. I now regularly search the racks whenever I wander into a bookstore (in other words, every few days) and was thrilled yesterday to find this title, which I hadn't read before.

On to specifics - I'm not going to summarize, that's done adequately elsewhere - but to start with, I could not put this book down. I started reading it around 12:15 AM, thinking "I'll just read a few chapters, whet my appetite, then go to bed." Nice try. 420 pages later, it was 3 AM and I was quite tempted to read the whole thing again. Partly because of the writing, which is absorbing, idiomatic, and (for you fellow Americans) not so terribly British as to be noticeably odd (although I DID finally prove to my parents that yes, "busking" is a real word of British origin - for non-musicians, it means "playing on the street with your case open for money", basically, and other people DO do it). And that brings me to another reason I love it, the musical aspect. Besides being a manic bibliophile, I'm also a string quartet addict, so when Tom Lynn strikes out to form a quartet, I'm right there with him - one of the few things that makes life worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned. Those scenes rang true, as well, which doesn't always happen when a writer seeks to insert musical color, so kudos there. The fantasy and magic aspect isn't nearly as overt as in some of her other works - no moving castles, other worlds, or oddball wizards here - but is instead woven in gently, becoming more visible as the story progresses, until you realize it's been creeping up on you for a while. Eerily believable.

Unusually, the book is almost all flashback - when we meet Polly Whittacker, she is 19 years old and getting ready to return to college for her second year, but most of the story takes place between her ages of 10 and 15. I like it - it's different, and getting all that back story in is not an easy task for a writer without letting all the seams show. When we finally arrive at the present, the pace rockets forward - the last 50 pages absolutely fly. Also unusually, things are not fully explained in the "Coda" - you have to work them out yourself to some extent. Hooray for a writer who doesn't feel she has to spoon-feed readers everything! And as a final aside, you could do a lot worse than to take the list of books Tom Lynn mails to Polly over the years and use it as a summer reading list, no matter how old you are. Diana Wynne Jones is my major (re)discovery of the year - good kids books are worthwhile at any age; they usually don't have swears or love scenes, but if it's well-written you neither need nor miss them, so don't be ashamed of picking up a book that may say "10 and up" or "young adult" on the cover. After all, "and up" means anything over.

I'm a big fan of Diana Wynne Jones, and have read nearly all her books--I think I like this one nearly the best; I say "nearly" because of the ending. The story has so many strengths, particularly the overall vision and voice, the brilliant, incisive characters, and the various relationships-- Polly's on-again, off-again relationship with Nina, her painful relationship with her horrible parents, her loving relationship wtih her grandmother, and the deepening, complex relationship with Tom. As so many readers have pointed out, however, this ending is confusing, and even though I hugely admire Jones' creativity, quirkiness and willingness to leave in mystery, I ultimately have to say that the ending detracts rather than adds. I've read it three times now, and here's my two cents:

1. Polly and Tom are true lovers, and at the end, Polly has won Tom, and saved him. In other words, it's a happy ending. And one reader is absolutely right to say that unlike the myth, Polly must let go of Tom in order to save him.

2. The way she saves Tom is very confusing. I don't understand why Jones rushes through it; she really ought to have slowed down, and added about ten pages (my daughter says twenty, woven throughout the book.) But what she's saying is, since their love is impossible "nowhere," then THEREFORE, it's possible somewhere (think of it as a logic puzzle): p. 420: "If two people can't get together anywhere..." they can therefore get together "nowhere" (Remember that "nowhere" is both a fairy place, and also, as it says in the book, both a dead end AND that very alive blank space that comes BEFORE CREATION: "Two sides to Nowhere, Polly thought. One really was a dead end. The other was the void that lay before you when you were making up something new out of ideas no one else had quite had before." (p. 405) So in this sense, "nowhere" is that space/time just before the creation of their love.

3. The main confusing thing, I think, is that the rules of the fairy/witch people seem to be elaborate, but are not set down--Polly seems to know it, just like that --she mysteriously knows exactly what to do in order to use magic to find Tom on that fateful day (HOW does she know?) & then she mysteriously seems to know all the rules the fairy people abide by, in the end. It's like Jones herself knows it all, and somehow imagines we readers do too. It's really irritating, like going to a party in which there is an in-joke that everyone else is laughing at, and you have no idea what it's about, but everyone else assumes you should. Laurel seems to be bound by all sorts of 'rules,' but we don't really know them. Polly somehow knows them, and what follows in the end is like a court of law, in which suddenly Polly has become a lawyer, though we readers have no idea what the rules are: She says on p. 408, "I claim that Morton Leroy has forfeited his right to Tom's life. And he'll have to find someone else or go himself." And she proceeds to argue that since Mr. Leroy tried to kill them, he has messed up since Tom's life is 'sacrosanct' - "Morton, my dear," Laurel says, "I think you may have been rather foolish." p. 410, and then Laurel essentially sends Morton and Tom on a trial for their lives. THe loser dies in order to give Laurel her next life. The trick is that anything Tom does, anything, will be matched by Morton--and this is why Polly must lose him in order to have him.

It's good, but simply sudden and arbitrary. The book would really have benefited by making these things clearer, by slowing down, and letting the reader feel the shift from realistic to metaphysical, in the end, rather than the very abrupt shift that there is now. It could easily, easily have been edited in, and I really don't understand why Jones didn't.

I have tons of other questions, too: For instance, why does Polly suddenly remember now? How? (From a book, she says-but surely she's read other books before this)

But I've still given the book five stars. I just think it's such a creative book, and even though the ending is too abrupt, its vision and sense is so strong and quirky that it remains one of my favorite Jones books.

Diana Wynne Jones is a writer who deserves to be better known and more widely read in the USA, and this is surely her most complicated, subtle book. It is not a young child's book nor a read-aloud one; and it is not for the person looking for a straight-ahead story of sorcery and adventure. It is the sort of book that needs a reader who is willing to do some of the work: for example by not just rushing by the quotes at the head of each chapter but reading them and thinking how they might relate to the plot; noticing how the book is structured and taking that as a hint; and so on. Read the other reviews and see how much those who did loved the book -- even though they were still confused by the ending.

In my opinion, Jones has asked too much of her readers. There is work that the reader just can't do (or I couldn't) to fill in the gaps. This would be a better (but longer) book if she had filled in some of the gaps; made some of the emotional transitions more understandable; given explanations for some of the weird things that are never explained. (Like: is the picture really changed, or is it Polly's perceptions that are changed?)

And there's no word for the ending but "confusing" and that's hard to forgive in a writer as good and as experienced as Jones. It reads to me as if she had a deadline and just finished the dang chapter somehow to get it out. The imagery is baffling; the rules of the contest are baffling; the final result is baffling (is Laurel still alive? Can Polly and Tom now be friends or not? is Leslie free now? &c.) and there is no emotional payoff, no resolution of the emotional tension between Polly and the other characters.

Despite this, I give it 4 stars because of all the really good things in it. Polly is a gallant and clever person to live with. There's lots of subtle humor (like Polly at age 11 setting out to make herself a hero). The whole issue of how Polly deals with her flawed and unreliable parents is told with immense sympathy and power. And so on. Just don't expect to understand the ending...

The cover is indeed terrible, but don't be put off. The editorial description (below) doesn't capture the essence of the book, but don't be put off.

"A photograph called "Fire and Hemlock" that has been on the wall since her childhood. A story in a book of supernatural stories -- had Polly read it before under a different title? Polly, packing to return to college, is distracted by picture and story, clues from the past stirring memories. But why should she suddenly have memories that do not seem to correspond to the facts?

Fire and Hemlock is an intricate, romantic fantasy filled with sorcery and intrigue, magic and mystery, all background to a most unusual and thoroughly satisfying love story."

This is a retelling in modern guise of the stories of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer--musicians at the mercy of the Queen of the Dark Fairies (the Unseelie Court).

Polly is 10 and lonely when she meets Tom Lynn, a cellist with the British Philharmonic Orchestra, on Halloween, when she and a friend dress as witches and dare each other to go by the local big, empty (haunted?) house. It appears that it ISN'T empty; a funeral is taking place. Tom Lynn is the ex-husband of one of the bereaved; he takes Polly outside to get away from the funeral, and they form a society of heroes-in-training. From there their friendship develops through letters, as Polly loves to make up imaginary worlds, and Tom likes to embellish the stories.

The magical relationship develops slowly, as it seems that all Tom Lynn writes becomes true. As Polly grows toward adulthood, Tom becomes more enmeshed in the lives of the Leroys (the fairies), and it is up to Polly to pull him free.

This is a fine novel. The charaterizations are excellent--Tom Lynn in particular. Jones doesn't make it a Disney fairy story (all the scary or hurtful parts cut out) but leaves the edges in.

Diana Wynne Jones writes some books for the middle-school set (like the Chrestomanci quartet) and some young-adult books (the Dalemark Quartet, Dark Lord of Derkholm & Year of the Griffin). She is thus stuck in the kids/fantasy ghetto (like Ursula LeGuin). Under a different name, I think this would be reviewed with other magical realists. Highly recommended.

This is a lovely book--it has been one of my favorites since I was a child. I read it every year around Halloween, and every year it seems more complex and wonderful.

I was very excited when I heard that it was to be reprinted after so many years. Finally, I thought, the world will have the chance to experience this wonderful book. Then I saw the new cover, and I was horrified. It is awful, and completely misleading as to the nature of the story. If this had been the original cover, I would never have picked up the book in the first place.

Now I am afraid that Fire and Hemlock will be passed up by readers who would cherish it, if they only knew what lies within its murky cover. This would serve the foolish publishers right--but not the author, not the story, and not poor Tom and Polly.

If you do decide to buy this book--and it's worth it, really it is--then I suggest you construct a book cover to mask the real cover's ugliness. Either that, or convince yourself that the glaring faces staring out at you are the evil Laurel and Morton Leroy--not Polly and Tom at all.

This is Diana Wynne Jones' best work--haunting, thought-provoking, even life-altering for some. It sings with truth and magic. Please don't judge it by its terrible cover!

Fire and Hemlock is a beautiful, skillful, multilayered retelling of a famous Irish myth set in modern England. The reader follows the escapades of a young English girl and her adult friend Tom, a professional cellist. The happy times times with Tom are set against a dark background of magical intrigue that the two friends almost do not believe the existence of until too late. For fans of other Diana Wynn Jones novels, you will recognize her skillful hand here, but this is a longer and far more difficult book than her others- more of an adult story. I found the story to be heartbreakingly beautiful on a first read, and every time that I have read it since I have gained a better understanding and higher appreciation for the story. Though you will have to search long and hard for your own copy, it is much more than worth it. (If you don't want your own copy, but just want to read it, check the hardcover section of a well-stocked children's library.)

First of all, though the novel is designated for Young Adults, this retelling of the Tam Lin legend is no more just for children than any fairy tale is. It's about something very difficult and powerful and life-changing. Up until the last two chapters, I'd say that the novel was nearly perfect. However, as many other readers have pointed out, the end is confusing. I read it carefully, but I don't understand Polly's logic behind her actions or how they would have defeated the evil faerie queen and set Tom Lynne free. I'm glad the story ended happily, but I have no idea what happened.