Wherein I commit authorial infidelity (and Diana Wynne Jones does too)
Written: Apr 07 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: the middle story is mildly amusing
Cons: the others are just plain (ob)noxious
The Bottom Line: This author can do better. You can do better. Now where's my brain bleach?
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| Greatpilgrim's Full Review: Diana Wynne Jones - Stopping For A Spell |
I never thought I’d be giving a Diana Wynne Jones book a two-star rating. A less-than-impressive work from one of my favorite authors just never crossed my mind. So this whole review is gonna feel like major, major cheating to me. Betrayal. Infidelity. Whatever you want to call it. All for you, my readers!
Stopping for a Spell is a very skinny little paperback clearly marketed for kids of the Harry Potter persuasion. Contained inside are three DWJ short stories that are unrelated to any of her other series (Chrestomanci, Howl’s Moving Castle, etc.) and feature ordinary children who have run-ins with magic – sometimes to their advantage, sometimes not. I was convinced to give it a whirl thanks greatly to the cover illustration of a girl rapturously playing a grand piano while fantastical creatures swirl outside the window.
The settings of these stories reminded me at times of the short outlandish kookiness of Rowling’s humorous interludes, with objects like chairs and grand pianos (yay!) coming to life and running around wreaking havoc, but this similarity is just about the only favorable quality in the short collection. That, and the fact that at least the stories are over soon! They are written with simplicity and economy of style, easily read by kids of 10 and up, but I personally won’t be handing this to any young friends of mine.
The reason for my intense dislike of Stopping for a Spell lies primarily in its tone. Each brief plot is okay in itself – not terribly strong, but suitable for a 30-page fable of large lettering and wide spacing – but the subject matter is downright off-putting and executed in a way that is distressingly “humorous” about unfunny things. Fantasy barely featured in these stories, but uncomfortable issues sure did – things like exploitation, child abuse (verbal and physical), domestic violence, cannibalism, adults who are passive about kids (and themselves) getting taken advantage of – and it’s all played for LAUGHS. It doesn’t matter that the instigator is no longer a problem at the end; Jones doesn’t address the fact that it’s wrong to let these things happen and to say it’s okay as long as the villain gets scared off by possessed furniture at the end. How messed up is that?
Chair Person kicks off the disconcerting mood with a thin plot concerning an old chair (about to be disposed of) who comes to life and gets more and more monstrous in his “takeover” of the family’s lives. The characterizations are practically non-existent (poor kids), except for the unfunny and thoroughly despiseable Chair Person and an exploitative “friend” who controls the deadbeat parents.
The Four Grannies was better than average for this collection, an amusing screwball comedy about Erg and Emily’s four watchful grannies and a disastrous “prayer machine” which Erg invents to wish Emily away. Jones’s cast here was much more vivid and the wit cranked up a notch, while hot-button issues (other than some child neglect) are kept at a minimum.
But Who Got Rid of Angus Flint? was the culmination of my disgusted recoil from the heedless mean-spirited tone of the stories. The family’s unwelcome visitor, Angus Flint, is an old friend of the dad’s and is quite cheerful about the fact that his wife left him: “Well, I couldn’t stand for that, and I had to hit her.” The chorus [of this statement] came so many times that the poor woman must have been black and blue. No wonder she left him! If I were her, I would have – Well, perhaps not, because, as we were swiftly finding out, Angus Flint was quite immune to anything ordinary people could do.” And so, having incapacitated the other adults in the story and left the kids to fend with Flint’s physical smackdowns and verbal assaults, Jones leaves it up to magic to take “revenge” on Flint. Sorry, no, ordinary people CAN do something about unwelcome visitors who abuse their children and steal their belongings: FILE A POLICE REPORT. It’s called justice, not revenge. UGH!
Okay, so you get the idea of why I found Stopping for a Spell so repugnant? It’s not just the fact that there are unpleasant elements in the stories. When you read of Harry Potter’s misfortunes, you are keenly aware that abuse and neglect are Wrong and someone, either adults or children, is working to fix it…or else the situation is deliberately ironic in allowing such circumstances to continue (as in Dumbledore’s tolerance of the Dursleys). But I got the feeling that DWJ didn’t even realize or care that she was treating really awful things so lightly and whimsically in her bizarrely crafted stories. The fantasy gets totally lost in the morass of lackluster writing and thoughtless plot elements.
I hope you don’t stumble across this collection and judge Diana Wynne Jones’s talents by it, because it’s hard to believe she even *wrote* these tales. By all means, bypass these uncharacteristic stories whose thin plots and meager characterizations aren’t enough to save its cold cruelty, and reach for pretty much ANY other DWJ novel.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Greatpilgrim
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Member: Victoria
Location: FL
Reviews written: 272
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About Me:
April 25: My computer has now officially been broken for 10 days. WAHHHH!
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