Fire & Hemlock - Diana Wynne

[This review is day one in my 30 Day Book Challenge - my favourite book]

I first read Fire & Hemlock when I was around nine. Since then, I'd estimate that I've read it anywhere between five and seven times. Each time, it has enthralled me, and, on my third reading (probably around ten), I promptly decided it was my favourite book-because some people don't reread any book twice, and I've read this one three times. While this was not the most times I'd reread a book (it was tied with my Hans Christian Andersen treasury), it was certainly the most times I'd reread a book and enjoyed it so much.

The book is a modernisation on the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin.At the start of the novel, Polly is a young girl with a penchant for adventure. Well, when prompted. Her parents ignore her, too absorbed in their own unhappy marriage to care about what Polly has to say about her life-even when she goes to a funeral in the house down the road and meets a strange man, Mr Lynn.

Fire & Hemlock is split into three parts-Nowhere, the land of fairies that Lauren rules, the Here-Now, the land of "reality", and Where-Now, the land of Mr Lynn and Polly's stories.

This book portrays many of Diana Wynne Jones' usual themes; the absent-minded parents, a reversal of the usual children adventure book's cliché of the benignly absent parents, the secret identities, most overt in the fairytale-land of Nowhere but, to a lesser extent, found in the Here-Now, and the allusions to mythology, most evident with Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, but, if you search, you can find allusions to 1001 Nights Eliot's Four Quartets.

But despite all these allusions, DWJ still manages to make Fire & Hemlock is a book about relationships-the relationship between the Quartet members, the relationship between Polly's friends, the relationship between Polly's family, the relationship between Laurel and Tom... I could go on and on. I think this is why people love it so much-the beautifully knitted relationships; things that most fantasy authors couldn't dream of creating in a lifetime. Fantasy books are rarely human, but this one has humanity at its core.

I've heard people complain about the ending, but I think it's the only natural conclusion. Yes, it's confusing, but it is a kind of symmetry with the beginning. The book begins with Polly trying to make logic of her divergent strands of memory, and ends with the reader trying to make logic of Wynne Jones' finale of the many divergent strands of plot.

Rating: six stars (none taken off for any flaws)