A lot has been written about the plot of this book, and I'm not really equal to writing more. Still, for the purposes of this post, I'll give a brief synopsis to give some idea of why I found the book so intriguing.
(some spoilers ahead, if you haven't read it.
The story begins with a young woman, Polly, about to head back to college. While packing her things, something triggers a memory, or several memories, that she knows must be false. As she tries to puzzle it out, she unlocks a flood of recollections from her childhood, beginning with the day she met a strange man at a funeral.
The book takes us through these lost memories, her odd and somewhat sketchy relationship with the man, and the overarching, ominous hold that his ex-wife and in-laws seem to have over him.
Considering the man's name is Thomas Lynn, and each chapter of the book begins with a quote from Tam Lin or Thomas The Rhymer, it's not hard to guess this aspect of the book. It's not even hidden, really, that the book is partly a modern reworking of Tam Lin. If I remember correctly, the copy I took out of the library even had this as a blurb on the cover. But if this is all it was, I don't think it would be so interesting.
Polly's adventures with Tom ("hero business", they call it) are mixed in with ordinary life, but Polly's parents are too self-absorbed and neglectful to even notice. "One of your Mr. Nobodies" her mother calls him, before letting Polly go off to Tom's London flat without even bothering to meet him first.
That there is something sinister, even supernatural, going on with Tom is accepted by Polly without much question, the way children do. Of course, Tom won't talk about it, clearly can't talk about it - Polly is sensitive to these things due to her difficult parents - so as she grows older, she resolves to find out exactly what's going on with Mr. Lynn.
When her hidden memories of Tom come to an abrupt halt, the grown-up Polly has to figure out what terrible thing she'd done that had erased him from her life so completely.
I'll leave it there, though I don't know if that in any way captures what is so appealing about the book.
Perhaps the most technically masterful thing Jones accomplished in this novel is the way she moves Polly from child to adult in a seamless, realistic way. Polly's hidden memories move from imaginative little girl to tomboy, to fickle adolescent, to a somewhat overconfident teen, to finally a college-age woman who is unsure what she will do with her future. Yet Polly is always recognizably the same character. Looking back through these stages of her life has a haunting quality, and the once upon a time element that one expects to find in fairy tales is here present in Polly's own story.
School and home are also rendered with depth and realism, and the fantastical elements, while necessarily less realistic, are not so unbelievable in the context of the story. The weaving together of the ordinary and extraordinary is one of Jones' hallmarks, and Fire And Hemlock is probably the book where she does it best.
Which isn't to say that the story isn't opaque at points, or at least translucent, in the sense of that thick block glass that only lets you see light and shadow. For instance, you are never explicitly told why Polly is able to intuitively grasp so much of Tom's situation, or why his in-laws perceive her as such a threat. And as far as the denouement goes, Jones was almost too clever for her own good. The answers are there in the story, but Jones clearly expected the reader to do the work and figure it out themselves. Hence the tendency for fans to go at the book like archeologists on a dig. You'd think we were interpreting one of Borges more convoluted works, not a YA novel.
For me, there is an essential whyness (I don't think that's a word, but never mind) that lies at the foundation of this story. As in, why did Jones write this particular book? I'd always had a strong sense that she hadn't done it just because it was a good story (after all, Tam Lin has been done dozens of times) or just to be clever, or because there is any particular moral in it.
I did know that she'd wanted to explore the concept of the female hero, because Jones said so herself. But that wasn't the answer I was looking for either. No, there was something else going on underneath the story, and it was mightily hard to get at.
Which brings me, at last, to the point of this post. I think I finally found it, the "why". Not in Fire And Hemlock or any of the other works referenced within, but in a short story of hers called The Master.
I had heard that Jones wrote The Master about a recurring nightmare she'd had, and then written Fire And Hemlock out of the same set of ideas, but hadn't been able to get my hands on a copy since no nearby library or bookstore carried it. So this weekend, I was thrilled to discover this book preview of Jones's Unexpected Magic that actually included it. Double thrills!
The Master is the third story when you scroll down:
https://www.harpercollins.com/web-sampler/978006555351
(Edit - or not. Some technichal difficulties with the link. But googling Unexpected Magic book sampler brings it up just fine.)
Even though The Master and Fire And Hemlock are very different stories, if you overlay one on top of the other the similarities are clear. The eerie, otherworldy house in the woods is the basis for Hunsdon House. The vet who is called into this situation is analogous, in many ways, to Polly. Egbert has elements of Tom, including the geas laid upon him not to tell. The unsettling rose garden links to the Tam Lin tale and T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, both. The wolves and their behavior - perhaps most tellingly of all - reflect Tom's in-laws. The list could go on and on.
As for the "why" of it, that is apparent, too. Both tales spring from a dream, the kind that haunt and nag at you and beg to be exorcized by finally understanding them. Which is exactly what Jones has inspired in the most obsessive readers of Fire And Hemlock.
And if that is what Jones meant to do, then that was the most technically masterful thing she accomplished in the book.
It only took 27 years for me to work it out. It was worth it, though.
If you can get hold of a copy of "Reflections," a collection of miscellaneous essays, presentations, and critical writings by DWJ, she discusses Fire and Hemlock at length in the one beginning on p. 67, about the heroic ideal. (I believe this is also the essay she refers to in a different place, as misrepresenting the process of writing, but that's a side effect of having to write about the process of writing, most of which happens below the threshold of consciousness). Another essay in the same volume, concerning "Freedom to Write," reveals that her YA novels are all regarded as difficult by adults, as she always assumed that kids could keep up with her - she is writing, after all, in much the same way the growing brain thinks. When she wrote for adults, she had to force herself to stop explaining things, because adults so often stop using the brain functions necessary to comprehending how a story works.
ReplyDeleteDWJ's fiction is worthwhile for everyone; her non-fiction is invaluable to those interested in writing processes.