Reread: Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones

[coraa]

Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones

After Diana Wynne Jones passed away earlier this year, I started rereading some of my favorites of her books. (Not in any kind or orderly or organized fashion; for that, see swan_tower's DWJ project.) It's hard for me to actually decide what my favorite DWJ book is. Archer's Goon is a possibility, Charmed Life is a possibility; Witch Week is a possibility. But Howl's Moving Castle is a strong contender for favorite. It's also one of the earliest DWJ I read: after Archer's Goon but before Charmed Life.

The book is set in a mildly fairy-tale-esque world—fairy-tale-esque enough that its protagonist, Sophie, knows that (being the oldest of three children instead of the youngest) she is not meant for great things, and is only going to get into trouble if she sets off to seek her fortune. So she settles into the boring but sensible work of trimming hats at the hat shop her father owned before he died. But the Witch of the Waste arrives on Sophie's doorstep with a curse, and sets her off to seek her fortune (and cross paths with the wicked magician Howl) whether she planned it or not.

I think the thing I love most about this book, have always loved most about it, is how grounded and sensible it is. For instance, Howl has a pair of seven-league boots that Sophie and Michael (Howl's apprentice) use to visit one of Sophie's sisters. Seven leagues is twenty-ish miles... and of course it's hard to steer or navigate if you go ten miles at a step. And the way Sophie justifies sticking around Howl's castle is by acting as a housekeeper... complete with details of exactly how much work it is to clean up after a layabout wizard and his teenage apprentice if they haven't cleaned in years. (It made me want to go do some spring cleaning of my own, in fact.)

The characters are really what make this book. Well, and the setting (I love the odd combination of fairy-tale and realistic of the world, and of course the castle is marvelous). There's a plot involving the Witch of the Waste and a missing prince, but it's really an excuse for Sophie to be clever and sensible and no-nonsense, and for Howl to be brilliant and lazy, and for Calcifer the fire demon to be... thoroughly Calcifer, and so on. Even the more minor characters, like Sophie's sisters and the dog, are so beautifully-drawn even in just a few lines that I feel like I know them, and would happily have tea with them.

This is part of the genre I think of as "cozy fantasy," and it's one of my ultimate comfort reads. It's funny and warm, tremendously readable, and I highly recommend it.

(The Miyazaki movie tends to split the opinions of fans of the book. While it has the same story, in fairly broad strokes at least, it turns the sensibility of the book upside-down: where the book is pragmatic and grounded even in its more magical details, the movie is dreamlike even in its more mundane details. I think that's why it feels so different—at least to me—even though the characters and plot are largely similar. I like both, but they are very much not the same.)

I have not yet read the sequels, partly because I'm afraid that very few things could live up to this book. Those of you who have read Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways: what do you think of them?

And now for some spoilery commentary:



I always remember the snarky, takes-no-garbage-from-anyone Sophie after her transformation, and so every time I reread I am startled by the mousy Sophie of the first few chapters. I've always loved Sophie's rationale for acting differently: she doesn't have a lot left to lose, and as an old woman she can get away with a lot of things that she couldn't as a young woman. (The transition, although always surprising to me, still always feels natural because it's not so much that I think that Sophie's personality changed as that her way of the facing the world changed.)

The first time I read the book, when I was about thirteen, I was both surprised and delighted by Sophie and Howl being in love: a mingled "Oh!" and "Well, of course!" Rereading, I can see the way Jones set that up, the hints and strings pulled, and I appreciate it a different way. The same goes for the various mysteries: it's fascinating to watch Calcifer try to drop hints about his contract with Howl now that I know the truth about the contract, and yet the hints aren't so obvious that I think that Sophie is stupid for missing them. And the same goes for Sophie's magic: her ability to talk magical properties and even life into inanimate objects is obvious (and explains a heck of a lot) early on if you know it's there, but is subtle enough to not knock you over the head. If I was going to study a book for ways to lay hints and foreshadowing without resorting to heavy-handedness, this would be high on the list as something to examine.

The team of Michael, Calcifer and Sophie—at first at odds with one another, but gradually working as a team to deal with Howl—is one of my favorites. I love the bit where Sophie and Michael try to figure out the John Donne poem-spell, and Calcifer and Michael trying to hide money to keep spendthrift Howl from immediately spending it. And then at the end when they wind up working with Howl instead of at odds with him, well, it's delightful.

Comments

[kore]

SUCH A GREAT BOOK. So wry! So witty! So cozy, as you say, and yet such sly little stabs at convention - Sophie's gaining a real personality only when she thinks she has nothing else to lose, Howl's constant beautifying in the legendary bathroom, &c. And the Donne poem is great, and the scarecrow and Witch of the Waste really terrifying. I know people who think Sophie and Howl hooking up at the end feels rushed or forced, but it's totally in the convention of screwball comedy, and as you say, Jones drops a lot of little subtle hints along the way - and they only click into place when you get there and realize, "of course, THAT'S what was going on all the time," which is one of my favourite methods of storytelling. I liked also that Sophie's stepsisters and stepmother are presented as flawed but not eeeevil beings - Fanny _does_ exploit Sophie, it's true, but it's also obvious she cares for her too, in her own way, and I loved her family all coming together at the end of the book. Like a Shakespearean romance, funny and silly and happy.

The sequels....ehhhhh. I liked the characters in the Magic Carpet, but there was enough racial stereotyping? that it made me uneasy and I was never quite sure whether Jones was sort of getting sucked into failiness or making fun of said stereotypes, so that kind of took the edge off the fun. And maybe I was grumpy when I read the second sequel, but it just seemed like the form was off -- it felt sort of rushed and rambunctious in the way Jones's style does to me when it's just not convincing, and I didn't particularly like the relationship between the male and female leads. I also REALLY didn't like how Sophie is treated in the last book. But I just might need to reread it when less cranky. I think both books suffered mightily from being sold as "sequels" to HMC, and I wonder how I would've read them as standalones; Sophie, Howl and Calcifer do show up, but just barely in the second, and they don't really do much in the third.

[jumpuphigh]

I think you should give the other 2 books a read. I don't think they'll disappoint at all.

[rachelmanija]

I was kind of meh on Castle in the Air and don't remember it at all other than that; ditto on House of Many Ways. Which other DWJ books have you not read yet?

I don't know which I love more about Howl's Moving Castle, the characters or the plot. It's just so well-plotted! And I love Howl and Sophie and Calcifer, but probably Howl the best, because he just cracks me up.

It also fascinates me how the "old woman" transformation is taken seriously, and how it's not horrible but freeing. When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple show my grumpiness and revel in my ability to boss people.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

This makes me want to reread it.