white_hart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_hart) wrote2018-05-06 06:32 pm
white_hart) wrote2018-05-06 06:32 pm
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Reading: Fire and Hemlock
I have been struggling mental-health-wise lately, and needed some comfort reading, so I reached for Fire and Hemlock, which has been my top comfort read ever since I first read it about thirty years ago. Despite that, it's a long time since I last actually read it from cover to cover, rather than just re-reading my favourite parts.
Fire and Hemlock is Diana Wynne Jones's take on the ballads 'Tam Lin' and 'Thomas the Rhymer'. It's not a retelling of either, but it takes as its central premise the idea that the Queen of Elfland in each ballad is the same person, and that Tam Lin and True Thomas are just two of her long string of human husbands. The latest husband is cellist Thomas Lynn, who has succeeded in divorcing the Queen (currently known as Laurel) when he meets ten-year-old Polly, who has accidentally gatecrashed a funeral party at Laurel's house, and Polly invents the story of Tom's secret alter ego, the hero Tan Coul, and herself as his assistant. Over the next few years, their relationship develops through a handful of meetings and numerous letters, as well as the books that Tom sends Polly from bookshops up and down the country, and yet, at the start of the book, Polly finds that she has forgotten Tom, having done something that caused him to vanish from her life and her memory and be drawn back into Laurel's clutches.
It's a complicated book, although at first glance it seems straightforward. The supernatural plot runs in a mostly-quiet counterpoint to the normality of Polly's 1980s childhood and the difficulties of her parents' divorce, occasionally building up to a crescendo and then dying away until the next time. There are lots of layers of meaning and references to myths, legends and other books; as well as the two ballads, the structure and imagery owes a lot to Eliot's Four Quartets (which I didn't read until long after I first read Fire and Hemlock), in particular the mixture of reality and unreality, Nowhere and Now-Here, that runs throughout the book. Even the good characters are often not very nice; Tom and Polly's friendship is clearly genuine, but that doesn't excuse the fact that Tom is using Polly to try to get free of Laurel, and that in turn doensn't excuse her betrayal, and there's an awkwardness about it as Polly's childish affection becomes a teenage girl's crush which is no less difficult to read for being very true-to-life. It's not an easy read, and even now I'm not sure I completely understand it*.
It remains one of my favourite books. I love the way the story builds up, with the truth gradually being revealed rather than coming as a single revelation. I love that Polly makes terrible mistakes, picks herself up and does what she can to set them right. I love the way DWJ's typical sense of humour pervades the book. And more than anything, I love the way this book describes the emotions Polly feels, the bleaching all-pervading uneasiness and the jet of misery that wells up inside her, because those are such perfect descriptions of the way anxiety and depression feel. I was pretty familiar with both of them by the time I first read the book but didn't even know that other people felt the same way, let along having ever read descriptions of them that I could identify with this way. So I love Fire and Hemlock more than any other of DWJ's books, and still turn to it when I'm struggling, because it's the book that told me I wasn't alone in feeling this way, and that the monsters in my head could be fought.
* One of the essays in DWJ's Reflections** talks about all the layers of meaning and influence she included, and it's worth seeking out.
** Flicking through Reflections after finishing Fire and Hemlock this afternoon, I also discovered that one of my Faculty members is DWJ's son and possibly the original of Sebastian Leroy.
Fire and Hemlock is Diana Wynne Jones's take on the ballads 'Tam Lin' and 'Thomas the Rhymer'. It's not a retelling of either, but it takes as its central premise the idea that the Queen of Elfland in each ballad is the same person, and that Tam Lin and True Thomas are just two of her long string of human husbands. The latest husband is cellist Thomas Lynn, who has succeeded in divorcing the Queen (currently known as Laurel) when he meets ten-year-old Polly, who has accidentally gatecrashed a funeral party at Laurel's house, and Polly invents the story of Tom's secret alter ego, the hero Tan Coul, and herself as his assistant. Over the next few years, their relationship develops through a handful of meetings and numerous letters, as well as the books that Tom sends Polly from bookshops up and down the country, and yet, at the start of the book, Polly finds that she has forgotten Tom, having done something that caused him to vanish from her life and her memory and be drawn back into Laurel's clutches.
It's a complicated book, although at first glance it seems straightforward. The supernatural plot runs in a mostly-quiet counterpoint to the normality of Polly's 1980s childhood and the difficulties of her parents' divorce, occasionally building up to a crescendo and then dying away until the next time. There are lots of layers of meaning and references to myths, legends and other books; as well as the two ballads, the structure and imagery owes a lot to Eliot's Four Quartets (which I didn't read until long after I first read Fire and Hemlock), in particular the mixture of reality and unreality, Nowhere and Now-Here, that runs throughout the book. Even the good characters are often not very nice; Tom and Polly's friendship is clearly genuine, but that doesn't excuse the fact that Tom is using Polly to try to get free of Laurel, and that in turn doensn't excuse her betrayal, and there's an awkwardness about it as Polly's childish affection becomes a teenage girl's crush which is no less difficult to read for being very true-to-life. It's not an easy read, and even now I'm not sure I completely understand it*.
It remains one of my favourite books. I love the way the story builds up, with the truth gradually being revealed rather than coming as a single revelation. I love that Polly makes terrible mistakes, picks herself up and does what she can to set them right. I love the way DWJ's typical sense of humour pervades the book. And more than anything, I love the way this book describes the emotions Polly feels, the bleaching all-pervading uneasiness and the jet of misery that wells up inside her, because those are such perfect descriptions of the way anxiety and depression feel. I was pretty familiar with both of them by the time I first read the book but didn't even know that other people felt the same way, let along having ever read descriptions of them that I could identify with this way. So I love Fire and Hemlock more than any other of DWJ's books, and still turn to it when I'm struggling, because it's the book that told me I wasn't alone in feeling this way, and that the monsters in my head could be fought.
* One of the essays in DWJ's Reflections** talks about all the layers of meaning and influence she included, and it's worth seeking out.
** Flicking through Reflections after finishing Fire and Hemlock this afternoon, I also discovered that one of my Faculty members is DWJ's son and possibly the original of Sebastian Leroy.
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*I did know about your faculty member, though, on account of being taught by him when doing my Masters at the Other Place, when someone mentioned it.
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I am definitely feeling a bit better, probably thanks to a combination of Fire and Hemlock and some actual sunshine. Which is good, given that on Friday I actually felt bad enough to tell AFT that I was feeling bad because I just couldn't try to pretend I was OK any more.
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Also: Happy Birthday!!
*Hugs*
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I hope you're having a better week. Feeling the need to actually tell AFT does sound like things were very rough.
(I spotted you from the top deck of the bus this morning as I was en route to the dentist before work. Good T-shirt!)
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I'm not sure what to recommend as a first book to read, if you wanted to. If you don't mind it being different to the film, then Howl's Moving Castle might be good. If not, maybe The Lives of Christopher Chant?
white_hart, I hope you're feeling better this week. I seem to have some sort of visiting anxiety weasels and as an attempt not to dwell on it too much have been imagining them migrating lemming-like across the country, bothering those who happen to be standing in the way but shortly to vanish over the horizon in the traditional lemming fashion.
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I am feeling quite a bit better this week, thanks.
*I know it does have sort of sequels now, but it feels standaloney in a way I don't think any of the Chrestomanci books does to me.
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I agree about Howl being more standaloney, although I encountered the Chrestomanci books randomly at the whim of libraries without realising that the others existed, so I think they can be read pretty independently too.
I tend to recommend The Lives of Christopher Chant not for chronological reasons but because I find it easier to discuss, and because I find the storytelling more ... not sure what the word I want is - not 'straightforward' exactly, but ... Nope, being articulate is clearly not happening right now. I think it's probably just my personal reaction to Cat's point of view.
Looks like I need a re-read to find out what I'm thinking!