Every now and then a book I read makes me feel I’ve come home.
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones delivered that spectacular feeling.
In pondering what combination of things makes it so, here’s what I came up with:
It’s a story of unique characters—oddballs, really—all of whom have a “knack,” or special gift. (Partly or completely magical.) It’s set in a community full of such unique characters. Summed up, home is finding oneself among like-minded, like-spirited individualist folk. They share a common thread of history, common friends, and weave bonds as they face a common foe. Pretty simple really, but to me, completely satisfying.
When you take that and look at Piper Pan and Her Merry Band, you’ll recognize some of the same values: “oddballs” coming together, using their knacks to achieve a common goal.
The “homecoming” feeling Enchanted Glass delivered also made me look back at the community I grew up in—I recognized a similar spread of unique folk with special knacks and shared passions. Lucky me!
Here’s the story summary for Enchanted Glass:
After his grandfather dies, Andrew Hope inherits a house and surrounding land in an English village, but things become very complicated when young orphan Aidan shows up and suddenly a host of variously magical townsfolk and interlopers start intruding on their lives.
Diana Wynne Jones was a master at fantasy storytelling. (Sadly, she passed away in 2011.) She wrote a lot if books, so if you like Enchanted Glass, there are plenty of others to explore. I’ve found she can create something quite different each time—not every author can do that—not just the story line, but the whole feel and style as well.
Reading her biography on Wikipedia, I am stirred by the fact that while attending St. Anne’s College at Oxford, Diana attended lectures by both C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkein. It reminds me that masters are not created in a vacuum. Associating with each other and each other’s creations is formational—like tectonic plates colliding and creating a mountain range.
On your “reasons to read” list, you can add “the experience of coming home.”
Here’s to your happy reading!