Enchanted Glass

While this isn't a proper book review, I just wanted to mention how much I loved this charming story, and why.

Diana Wynne-Jones had long been one of my favorite authors, ever since I read Fire and Hemlock as a teen. There was always something special about her books that drew me in completely. Despite the fantastical nature of the stories, they seem somehow concrete and believable, as if they could have been happening on the next street. I think this is because at the heart of the stories are characters who are so vital and real, even the strangest happening seems believable as well.

Enchanted Glass is another example of this. From the start we're presented with a world where magic is real. For those in the know, it's a natural part of daily life. Daily life on the other hand, is very ordinary. There are tyrannical housekeepers, endless garden vegetables, lawn mower repairs, social workers and the like. The characters seem like utterly ordinary people too, the sort that you'd find in any small village, except so many of them seem to have an innate gift for magic. While this isn't unremarkable to the characters, it's generally accepted.

The magic too, manifests itself in practical uses. Growing perfect roses and using racing results in the daily paper as an oracle are expressions of the homey, comfortable nature of it. That's unless things go awry, which of course they do. Even then, the magic is a pure and natural thing of nature itself, channeled with the warmth of real humanity. I think it says a lot that the enchanted glass of the title - an old and ineffably powerful thing - is inset into a humble kitchen door.

This book had hints of so many others that I had loved in the past. There were elements of stories like Dogsbody and Fire and Hemlock, maybe even the slightest touch of Howl's Moving Castle, but I was reminded most strongly of a combination A Sudden Wild Magic and Archer's Goon. With the way so many strange and unlikely characters arrive with believable ordinariness, it felt pleasantly familiar, but still without knowing what to expect.

This was one of those books that as soon as I finished the last sentence, I missed the coziness of it and turned back to start it over again. The only complaint I have is that it's short, so some of it seems rushed through. It would have been marvelous to see it more fleshed out in places. Even so, there was enough space in what's left unsaid to use one's imagination.

I'm so sorry that there will be no more books from this wonderful author. As I read through the few last books she wrote, it's bittersweet that she stayed at the top of her game and could write with such charm even late in the day.