Fire and Hemlock

When I was doing my recent Diana Wynne Jones binge, I remembered that I used to have a copy of Fire and Hemlock, which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared (I must have lent it to someone). Anyway, I bit the bullet and bought myself another copy and plunged in.

You would think that, having read it before, I would find the plot easier to understand. I did not. What did help immensely was finding a blog post from someone which explained the 'problematic' ending and the rest of the story while they were at it. This is an extremely clever, deeply layered, intelligent book which draws on several different legends, most obviously the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, in which the Fairy Queen takes a mortal as her king for ten years, after which he is supposed to be sacrificed, but is saved by the heroism of his mortal lover, Janet. In Fire and Hemlock, Thomas Lynn takes the part of Tam Lin while Polly is his saviour -- a female hero, loyal, brave and imaginative.

The actual mechanics of the deal that Mr Lynn strikes with the Fairy Queen and her minions, and the way Polly finally overcomes their bargain, are too complicated to explain (maybe I still don't fully grasp them :), but this doesn't at all get in the way of a deeply engaging, playful and original story which races along in a most satisfying way. 

This is not to say that the novel is without flaws. The growing friendship between Polly, aged ten at the start of the book, and adult Mr Lynn, is uncomfortable to read, especially as he really is, in a sense, grooming her. By the end of the story Polly is nineteen and Tom is, at the very youngest, twenty-nine -- still a big gap but not an impossible one -- but still... In fact, most of the relationships in the book are uncomfortable in one way or another, except for Polly's grandmother, who is fantastic.

Fire and Hemlock is not an easy read. It's about as sophisticated as young adult literature gets, considerably more sophisticated than the 'adult' murder mystery I was reading at the same time. And it's definitely a book I will reread in the future.