Charmed Life

Charmed Life, Diana Wynne Jones – 1977


Charmed Life is a story not unlike a cat; playful and cute, until the claws come out. In discussing the genius of Diana Wynne Jones one encounters the same problem as when discussing Terry Pratchett; all the cleverness and craft that form the basis for their books are camouflaged by being written with such matter-of-fact elegance. In short; they make it look easy.

In this novel, written for children, we find ourselves in a quasi-Edwardian world where America is known as Atlantis, the French won Waterloo, and most importantly, magic is seen as simply another profession, such as the law or medicine, if one displays sufficient talent. After the deaths of their parents, Eric (Cat) Chant and his older sister Gwendoline go to live with Mrs Sharp their downstairs neighbour who is an affectionate, if deeply unscrupulous, Certified Witch. Though the meek and timid Cat clearly has no magical ability whatsoever, the haughty Gwendoline soon proves herself an exceptionally powerful sorceress. Dissatisfied with living with Mrs Sharp and discovering a connection to the renowned Chrestomanci, Gwendoline writes to him and the great man adopts them both, and brings them to live at Chrestomanci Castle. Sparks fly, however, as he refuses to acknowledge anything remarkable about the girl, and her actions become more outrageous by the day in an attempt to provoke a reaction. Finally, she disappears entirely, leaving Janet, a bewildered stranger from another world who looks identical to Gwendoline, for Cat to find in her place. And the trouble is only just beginning…

If this vague summary sounds intriguing to you, or if Charmed Life is sitting nicely on your to-read list, then stop now, get a copy, read it, and come back. Normally, I wouldn't bother with what is essentially a spoilers warning like this, but this is Diana Wynne Jones: the surprises in Charmed Life really will take you by surprise, and it's far better to experience them, without my having spoiled it for you. So, go on… shift! 

Jones' greatest skill in writing Charmed Life is her deft balancing of uncanny atmosphere and twisting plot; indeed the sheer darkness of Charmed Life is hardly apparent initially as Jones continually shifts the tone between whimsical and eerie, particularly once the children enter Chrestomanci Castle. Once there, Gwendoline's furious pranks and attacks are initially riotous, and as readers we revel in the spirited rebellion against the supercilious Chrestomanci and his luxurious, stifling household. The conflict escalates, however, and soon Gwendoline summons a creature 'weak, white and lonesome. It was draggled and slimy'1 outside the window, and when this horrifying apparition still provokes no response, Gwendoline uses an entire army of enlarged beetles and insects, as well as more of the ghastly white creatures, to interrupt an important dinner party. Though this scene is viscerally unpleasant, it is the events that follow which provide the first major curve-ball of the book. The beetles finally provoke a reaction from Chrestomanci and Gwendoline is punished, and just as we expect there will now be some important character development, Jones subverts our expectations and Gwendoline vanishes, leaving the terrified Janet in her place. This, in turn eventually leads to the major revelation; that Eric is a nine-lived sorcerer, and Gwendoline has merely been syphoning off his power while letting him believe he has no magic whatsoever. And finally we realise that the horrible white apparitions are in fact Eric's own lost lives, one of which at least, Gwendoline is responsible for him losing...


Making Gwendoline the villain, and happy to kill her brother altogether if necessary, is one of Jones' masterstrokes, and it is from here, rather than the ghoulish creatures and sometimes sinister feel of the castle, that the real darkness of the book arises. When we first meet Gwendoline as an arrogant, conceited girl, we assume that, in a children's book, these are traits that she will learn to grow out of, and that her affection for Cat will outweigh her power-hungry nature. To subvert this is a gloriously unsentimental choice of Jones', one that it seems unlikely would be made by a children's author today, certainly not without deep psychoanalysis of the character or considerable angst. The book gains its consdierable darkness from Gwendoline simply being a selfish and despicable person. A similar revelation is that all of the eccentric, entertaining villagers that Cat grew up around fully embrace their suspicion and hatred of Chrestomanci and are acting alongside Gwendoline, and are therefore willing to be complicit in the murder of Cat to achieve their goal. Looking very deeply at it from today's perspective, and given that Jones grew up in war-time, the idea of all the slightly eccentric figures from the town you grew up in suddenly being the villains and expressing views that are dangerous and ignorant, is a wonderfully sinister one, which is perhaps particularity resonant now. Indeed, in the townsfolk's dismissal of Chrestomanci and what he does, there is almost a faint whiff of being fed up of listening to the experts…


Balancing out the darkness of the book are some wonderful characters. Cat himself is almost unbearably wet at times, partly due to his own timid nature but also because of his emotional dependency on Gwendoline, but once she vanishes he gradually begins to develop. Janet and Gwendoline, so physically alike and emotionally different, both bring fire and energy into Cat's life, and are hugely entertaining characters in their own right, but also demonstrate the difference between a largely positive force and largely negative one in someone's life. Chrestomanci comes from the Sherlockian school of aloof-genius-heroes, often appearing in magnificent dressing gowns, but is most interesting in his relaxed and unguarded moments. The various figures of his household are a delight, particularly his wife Millie and the contrast we see in her between how she appears on the surface, and what she is capable of. Elsewhere, the Nostrum bothers make excellent secondary villains, and Mrs Sharp is another extraordinarily complex character for a children's book; the scene where Cat sees her again after missing her so badly, is deeply poignant as he begins to realise, despite her obvious genuine fondness for them, how unscrupulous and self-serving she really is.


Charmed Life is a novel of dazzling unpredictability and wonderful lack of sentimentality. Neil Gaiman, a life-long friend and fan of Jones, stated that her 'fiction was never improving'2, meaning that there was no moral or lesson to be learned from it. Unlike either the Narnia or Harry Potter series there is no message here, not even a predictable one of good and evil, it is simply a story, an enjoyable and unsettling story, and as such is a wonderful children's book. It is, in a word, enchanting.



Link to HarperCollins, where the book is available: https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007255290/charmed-life

1Jones, Diana Wynne. Charmed Life, Harper Collins 2000. pp. 77




2Gaiman, Neil. Reflections: On Diana Wynne Jones in The View from the Cheap Seats, Headline Publishing Group, 2016 pp. 104

A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness (From an original idea by Siobhan Dowd) – 2011

Copyright Jim Kay & Walker Books, 2011

TRIGGER WARNING: References to cancer treatment, death from cancer and grief.

Our second Carnegie Medal winning book in two weeks, A Monster Calls is in itself the product of two previous Carnegie Medal winners; Patrick Ness, who wrote the book, and Siobhan Dowd, who had the initial idea, and had been planning to write it, before her death from breast cancer in 2007, at the age of 43. Her death, and more importantly, her knowledge of her impending death lie at the deepest heart of this book, a book that is all about hiding, withdrawing and denial.

Conor is having nightmares, and when he wakes from them, the old yew tree outside his window comes alive and becomes a monster, that says it has come to get him. Conor however is unafraid. He has seen worse and cannot be frightened by so simple a threat as a monster. The monster, bemused, states that it shall return four times; on the first three occasions it will tell him a story, and on the last, he must tell it one. The next morning, we see Conor suffer through school and return home, to find his grandma there again, talking with his mother about Conor coming to live with her, and, to Conor, intruding on the fragile world he and his mum have together. Fragile, because, thanks to references to medication and chemo, we realise very quickly that Conor's mum is seriously ill. The monster returns that night, and tells Connor a fairy-tale in which nothing is as it seems at first. During his stay with his grandma in her pristine house, while his mum goes back into hospital, the monster appears again with a second slippery tale, which ends in the monster, with Conor's assistance, destroying a bad man's house, and when the vision of the monster fades, he has destroyed his grandma's sitting room. The last story comes at school, as Conor's feelings of isolation and invisibility peak and he, with the help of the monster behind him, violently confronts his playground tormentor. Finally, however, the last medicine his mum was to be tried on fails, and the monster appears demanding Conor's own story, his own, deeply buried truth: not just that his mum is dying, but his own, conflicted reactions to it and the far more terrible monster that his denial has formed in his nightmares.

Like The Amazing Maurice last week, A Monster Calls is deeply concerned with the importance of story. Unlike The Amazing Maurice, A Monster Calls also bears the burden, though it wears it as lightly as it can, that it may be functioning in children's lives in a similar way to the monster's stories in Conor's. Although the stories that the monster tells contain parallels to Conor's life, when, after the first story featuring a not-so-wicked stepmother, in whom Conor sees a link to his grandma, Conor angrily questions 'Is that supposed to be the lesson of all this? That I should be nice to her'1, he monster laughs at him and demands 'You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons?'2. It is a brilliant touch on Ness' part, and an important point to make, particularly for all those children reading the book who may be in a similar situation to Conor: this book is not an instruction manual on how to cope with grief. However, just because the monster's stories, and indeed A Monster Calls itself, are not in any way didactic, does not mean that nothing can be learned from them, and the basic, underlying message, as within all great stories, is that life is, by its very nature, complicated. In telling simple stories that highlight the difficulty and the complexity of life, what the monster does is make Conor, who is withdrawing and beginning to shut down emotionally, think more empathetically, to care and to feel again. In giving Conor a way to grasp the complexity, it allows him to question all the things he has assumed and internalised; his anger, his grief and his guilt.

Of course, there is the question of whether the monster is really there. There is, obviously, the interpretation that the monster is Conor's subconscious externalising the part of him that allows him to work though what is happening with his mum, although one wonders how a young child would know all of the references to furnish his subconscious with when the monster claims 'I have as many names as there are years to time itself! I am Herne the Hunter! I am Cernunnos! I am the eternal Green Man!'3. It is to Patrick Ness' credit that he walks a line perfectly between making it almost obvious that the monster is Conor's way of processing what is happening and injecting the text with just enough other-worldliness to suggest that just maybe, something ancient and powerful really is there to help Conor. However, his greatest achievement in A Monster Calls, is to ensure that we very quickly become uninterested in the monster's origins, and aware that they do not matter; what matters is Conor's path from denial to acceptance. A book so directly about powerful, primal emotions could easily slip into sentimentality, and it is to Ness' credit that he keeps all of the character's emotions and interactions achingly raw and believable. Take, for instance, the moment where, having fought for most of the story, Conor and his grandma agree to make peace. It, like much of the book, is awkward and uncomfortable, and we are left in no doubt that there will be many more clashes in the future, but it is finally acknowledged that although they are 'not the most natural fit'4 'we are going to have to learn'5. Whether the monster is real or not is ultimately unimportant, because what overwhelms the book is the reality of Conor's emotions.

Copyright Jim Kay & Walker Books, 2011

The other element of the book that must be mentioned is Jim Kay's phenomenal artwork. Jim Kay won the Greenway Medal, the companion to the Carnegie Medal which is awarded for illustration, for A Monster Calls, the very first time that both awards have been won by the same book, and Kay's win is as richly deserved as Ness'. These are not simple illustrations, adding some nice, but unessential, emphasis to the text, and done away with in later editions. No, these are the soul of the book, establishing and maintaining the raw, gut-wrenching tone in a far more instant, visceral way than even the best writer can. Over half the pages have some detailing on them, and there are nearly fifteen double page drawings, where Jim Kay's magnificent work can take centre stage. I could not imagine the story without them, and I really wouldn't want to try.

Copyright Jim Kay & Walker Books, 2011

A Monster Calls is a superb example of what happens when a simple idea is perfectly executed, and is every bit as deserving of it's Carnegie Medal as The Amazing Maurice. It is a devastatingly powerful work, and one that works best when consumed by total immersion: I read the entire thing in a single, three hour long sitting, and would recommend doing likewise. There is now a soon-to-be-released film (Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMgm20Di9Wg) but so many of the harsh, uncomfortable edges seem sanded down, till what we are left with appears to be a fiery Ent and sentimentalism. This condemnation may prove to be uncalled for, but even an excellent film would have difficulty measuring up to the bleak intensity of Kay's art, the harrowing poetry of Ness' words, and above all, the baton that Siobhan Dowd – to use Ness' metaphor – gave them to run with.


Link to Walker Books where the book can be purchased: http://www.walker.co.uk/A-Monster-Calls-9781406339345.aspx

1 Ness, Patrick. A Monster Calls, Walker Books Ltd. 2011. pp. 73
2 pp. 73
3 pp. 44
4 pp. 209
5 pp.209

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett – 2001

Greetings all! My apologies for not having updated in the last month, but having finished a show, post-show blues combined with the onset of a good old-fashioned cold left me feeling really crap for a while – certainly not up to writing analysis of what I was reading. Far worse, due to how spaced-out I was, I wasn't even feeling like reading, particularly as I am currently in the midst of a mighty SF/F classic tome – which will be reviewed once finished – which requires a fair dose of concentration to keep up with most of the time. However, during the worst of the cold, I looked up at a shelf, saw a beloved book, lifted it off and began to read. That book was Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

If you do not already know it, then perhaps my introducing it as a book that I read while feeling ill and unfocused, compounded with the fact that it was released as a children's book, may give the impression that the book is a simple one, entertaining without being challenging. In a word, no. If you are even slightly familiar with any of Pratchett's work, you'll understand what I mean when I say that this is Pratchett on his very top form. Hogfather form. Witches Abroad form. Reaper Man form. The only allowance he makes for his younger readers is that although The Amazing Maurice is set on the Discworld (shaped like a disc, resting upon the backs of four elephants - oh, you know! Or you should!) it is an entirely self-contained story, not featuring any of the vast array of superbly drawn characters he had created over 27 (at the time The Amazing Maurice was published) Discworld novels. None, except of course a brief cameo from Mr ALL-CAPS himself (again, you should know!) but then again, if any story goes on long enough, he'll be a part of it sooner or later! This is the novel that rightly won Pratchett the Carnegie Medal, giving him just a small amount of the critical praise he had been owed for so long.

Bad Blintz is a town, somewhere in Überwald, a sparse, mountainous region of the Discworld, and into this town comes Maurice, a cunning, conniving alley-cat, and the tribe of rats who now travel with him. All of these animals have recently found themselves to be suddenly sentient and as the rats collectively deal with their new-found consciousness in different ways, they are convinced by Maurice to participate in a scam, based around the well known fact that rats infest towns, and pipers come and get rid of the rats. Along with them is their pleasant if rather dim human, Keith, who really only wants to be able to play his pipe in peace. However, in Überwald they not only encounter Malicia, the mayor's story-obsessed daughter who constantly re-invents the story of her own life as it pleases her, but slowly discover the evil at work within the town, embodied in Spider, a monstrous Rat-King, formed of dozens of rats with their tails tied together. Before they know it, the fledgling community is plunged into a war and looking to Darktan, their resident trap expert, and Dangerous Beans, the closest thing they have to a religious leader, for guidance, while Maurice is forced to confront the fact that being conscious may also mean having a conscience. And all the time, the threat of the real piper's arrival hangs over their heads...

Like many of Pratchett's best, at the heart of The Amazing Maurice is a fascination with story. As you may have guessed, the book is Pratchett's riff on the Pied Piper legend and, as always when Pratchett riffs on established folk-tales, he treats it as exactly that within Discworld. Not only is Maurice's initial scam inspired by his understanding of the power the story of the piper holds, but when the professional piper arrives towards the end, we learn he himself is trading off the legend, allowing the rumours about him to build from 'the council didn't pay him and he played his special pipe and led all the kids up into the mountains'1 to 'Over in Klotz the mayor kept the piper waiting too long and he played his pipe and turned him into a badger'2. When he is secretly questioned about this at the end, the piper simply states 'It always pays to advertise, kid'3 and even admits 'Half the things people say I've done even I didn't make up'4. While this is a gently satirical point from Pratchett about the gullibility and tendency of people to exaggerate, there is also a more serious point about the importance of story, which is why Maurice's plan to deal with the piper is better than Keith and Malicia's proposal; because it more narratively satisfying.

A more serious demonstration of the power of story comes in the form of Mr Bunsy Has An Adventure, an illustrated children's book about talking animals who wear clothes and occasionally interact with humans, that the rats carry with them as an almost religious text. When Malicia accidentally reveals the truth about the book, dismissing it as 'stupid stuff for ickle kids'5, Dangerous Beans suffers a crisis of faith, devastated that what he believed to be 'a vision of some bright future'6 is actually just a children's story. Once he has emerged from his confrontation with Spider, the epitome of rat-kind’s despair and hatred, however, he counters the assertions that Mr Bunsy is just a lie, or a pretty story, with another idea ‘Perhaps it's a map'7.

If this process of evangelical belief, betrayal at the essential lies, then deeper examination of the truths mirrors the progression of a religious text within a civilisation, then Pratchett goes still further in showing the power of religion and faith within the rat's fledgling society. At the start of the book, the rats are beginning to develop the idea of the Big Rat Underground 'who made everything'8 - though of course, this being Pratchett, the essential absurdity in serious topics must always be noted, therefore the rats’ dismiss the idea of there also being a Big Human who made the humans as 'just being silly'9. It is these primal, new-born beliefs that Spider attempts to pervert with his claim that 'I am The Big Rat That Lives Underground'10, which Dangerous Beans refutes, along with Spider's cruelly Darwinian desire that the strong rats shall grow stronger, feeding on the weak, by stating that 'If there is a Big Rat, and I hope there is, it would not talk of war and death. It would be made of the best that we could be, not the worst we are'11. Given his role as the spiritual leader of the rats, Dangerous Beans is a somewhat messianic figure, yet it is Darktan who returns from the jaws of a mousetrap and bears 'the marks of the Bone Rat's teeth on him'12, and uses this reputation to anoint his followers with his blood, binding the terrified rats together into an army capable of surviving the night. In fact, though an actual sacrifice of a death so that another may live does occur, it comes from the most unexpected character, so I will not spoil it, except to say that it features one of the most poignant encounters with Death throughout the Pratchett canon.

None of this covers the wit and warmth, and only some of the depth and power of this wonderful book; it is a tale by Terry Pratchett on top-form and there's not much higher praise than that. No punches are pulled for his younger readers, although it is worth noting the brilliant stroke of Pratchett's, in writing for children, to subvert the things that they will be most familiar with – talking animals, Enid Blyton style adventures and a legend they will know. Of course, the subject of Pratchett's always precise, often affectionate and occasionally razor-sharp satire is not the story of the Pied Piper, but of life, from consciousness to civilisation; the rats are a microcosmic reflection of the human society above them. He also rigorously if subtly defends the place of story and of philosophers, storytellers and thinkers in the world. I will leave you with two examples from late on in the book: when Darktan and the Mayor talk together, both tired, irritable and the leader of their respective worlds, they begin to discuss Mr Bunsy, which the Mayor loved as a boy, and 'man and rat talked, as the long light faded'13 united by a story. And secondly, the thoughts Darktan, recently returned from near-death, has about Dangerous Beans, whom he had 'never talked much to'14, as he 'liked people who were practical'15: 'But now he thought: He's a trap-hunter! Just like me! He goes ahead of us and finds the dangerous ideas and thinks about them and traps them in words and makes them safe and shows us the way through. We need him'16.

Link to Penguin's website where the book is available: https://www.penguin.co.uk/puffin/books/1005046/the-amazing-maurice-and-his-educated-rodents/

1 Pratchett, Terry. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Corgi, 2002. pp. 230
2 pp. 233
3 pp. 242
4 pp. 243
5 pp. 161
6 pp. 48
7 pp. 257
8 pp. 90
9 pp. 90
10 pp. 204
11 pp. 209
12 pp. 263
13 pp. 266
14 pp. 179
15 pp.179
16 pp. 179