Leaning into joyous chaos

In Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, a young girl Sophie unwittingly attracts the anger of a wicked witch, whose curse transforms her into an old woman. Sophie must find her way out of her spell, and she does so by seeking the mysterious, possibly dangerous Wizard Howl. (The Studio Ghibli film of the same name loosely adapts this story.) Jones’ book is laugh-out-loud funny. Sophie’s transformation into an old woman frees her from the real-world and fairytale expectations of her class and gender—in her old-woman form, Sophie is braver, more powerful, and a good deal more crabby. Diana Wynne Jones’ world is full of chaotic magic and chaotic people. In this world, people become scarecrows, poems become spells, doors lead to other worlds, and castles can float. 

Diana Wynne Jones leaned into this delightful chaos across her prolific career, in which she wrote over 40 books for children and young adults. It’s hard to write a single-line description for her books, because of the complex ways in which her stories unfold. In Hexwood, perhaps her most complex book, she blends the world of Arthurian legend with the mundanity of modern-day small-town England, while also bringing in the story of a galactic empire. In the Chrestomanci series, a set of seven books about powerful enchanters, we are introduced variously to the multiverse, the idea that these enchanters have nine lives, and even a Romeo and Juliet-esque rivalry between warring magic families. This playfulness with genre makes it hard to slot her books into easy categories of ‘science fiction’ or ‘fantasy.’ Her characters also often defy categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’—they have very human flaws, which only makes them more interesting.

Like the best of children’s literature, her books are layered and clever, never talking down to her audience. Often, as in Howl’s Moving Castle and Fire and Hemlock, the characters are wrestling with a mystery, and the reader has access to the same clues they do. It’s such a delightful feeling—I remember feeling this, especially as a child—when the pieces slot into place, and I come to the same realisation as the characters do. The books are also full of intertextuality, drawing inspiration from or alluding to a range of works. Howl’s Moving Castle features a talking scarecrow, a Wicked Witch, and a wizard from another world—all elements from The Wizard of Oz. Castle In The Air draws inspiration from the Arabian Nights, and Fire and Hemlock is a version of the ‘Tam Lin’ ballad, but it’s structured around T S Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets.’ To Jones, stories are the backbone of other stories, ways we find meaning and make sense of our lives. You could read her books entirely unaware of these references and still enjoy them—a testament to how they work wherever the reader is ready to meet them. 

Jones wrote humorously on the difference between children and adults as readers in her essay collection Reflections: “Once when I was doing a signing, a mother came in with her nine-year-old son and berated me for making The Homeward Bounders so difficult. So I turned to the boy to ask him what he didn’t understand. ‘Oh, don’t listen to her,’ he said. ‘I understood everything. It was just her that didn’t.’ It was clear to both of us that his poor mother had given up using her brain when she read.” If you choose to, you will find it endlessly rewarding to be her ideal reader—to find joy and wonder in the complexities of her storytelling, humour in the everyday, and magic in the mundane. 

The author is a writer and illustrator.

Piqued is a monthly column in which the staff of Champaca Bookstore bring us unheard voices and stories from their shelves.