Reflections Read Free

physics, its own magic. Some are linked to our own world through having split off from it at earlier points in history; others are connected in different ways, or not at all. Diana never insists on surplus exposition, but her worlds have a conviction and a coherence that communicate themselves immediately. As she once put it:
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    You have to know enough about a world to be able to show things in the foreground that bring the background with them. You must have it firmly enough in your mind so that it all hangs together. You don’t have to say that there are wild beasts in the wood, so long as you have got the right setup where there might be.
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    All her worlds have that thought-through, felt quality. The same applies to her characters: she takes seriously the advice that she gives aspiring writers in an article in the present collection, that whatever appears on the page about a character, the author must know many times more again—about his or her appearance, past, taste in clothes and music. Diana was adamant that such knowledge did not need to be set down explicitly but that, with people as with physical locations, if the writer knows what she is talking about, her knowledge will communicate itself. The description Virginia Woolf gave of her method in Mrs. Dalloway is no less applicable to Diana:
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    I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humor, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment. 1
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    This is true; but one of the many ways in which reading Diana does not resemble reading Virginia Woolf is that Diana gives her readers waymarks by which to navigate her text, Homeric epithets that conjure a character in a minimal number of words. What reader of Fire and Hemlock will forget that Polly’s granny’s house smells of biscuits, for example, and the way that this comes to symbolize the homely, reliable, sweet but highly nutritious nature of Granny herself? How potent a symbol are Chrestomanci’s flamboyant dressing gowns, denoting both wildness and yet a certain physical indolence? How irritatingly recognizable are helpful people who, like Joris in The Homeward Bounders , are always ready to reach into their jerkins and find some desired item with a “Why, as to that !” Yet none of these is a caricature or simply a collection of catchphrases. We never doubt that behind each surface lies a system of complex and beautiful caves.
    Diana’s books have many subjects and many distinctive themes: language, imagination, storytelling, the recognition of talent in oneself, the ability to look beyond the obvious. If there is one that sums up the rest, however, perhaps it is that of empowerment—although I doubt whether Diana would have cared for the word. It is true that she also has a kind of affection for put-upon officials and for adults swept along by the tide of daily responsibilities. Their desire for respect, or at least feeling that they are not being positively laughed at, is one she treats with sympathy: one thinks of the anguished Sempitern Walker in A Tale of Time City , the earnest Rupert Venables from Deep Secret , or the harassed Wizard Corkoran in Year of the Griffin . But if there is a question of sides there can be no doubt that Diana is on the side of the powerless, the ones who have decisions taken and imposed upon them by others. And this, of course, usually means that she is on the side of children. As she has said, she aims to “provide a space where children can relax and walk round their problems and think ‘Mum’s a silly fusspot and I don’t need to be quite so enslaved by her notions.’” In a Diana Wynne Jones book, no orthodoxy or authority is above question. She is no nihilist—indeed, she has strong views about the responsibilities of the children’s author—but she is nevertheless one of the most