Review: Eight Days of Luke – Diana Wynne Jones

 

• Genre: Children’s Fantasy
• Published: 1975
• Pages: 203

I read this to take part in Jenny’s Books Diana Wynne Jones week from the first to the seventh of August. If you don’t know already, as I’m sure this author has cropped up a few times in earlier posts – she is one of my favourite authors. I won’t go on too much about how amazing I think she is and that I think everyone should just drop what you’re reading now and go and read Howl’s Moving Castle. I won’t do that. I’ll just let you know how I found this book.

It is the summer holidays and David Allard has to spend his summer with his awful relatives. He lives with Aunt Dot and Uncle Bernard and his Cousin Ronald and his wife Astrid. They’re all perfectly horrible, so he’s quite glum at the prospect of all those weeks being told to be grateful. Then Luke turns up and David’s summer holidays become a lot more fun – and extremely weird.

Typical of DWJ her books contain shoddy parenting and grumpy, sometimes evil gardeners. What more could you want? This was a fun, imaginative read that I had a great time reading. In typical Diana Wynne Jones fashion the fantasy and the magic just oozes out from around corners. She rarely spends much time explaining things because when you read one of her books you simply, just magically know and I can’t explain how.

I don’t want to say too much more about the book – it’s quite short and so I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. It probably isn’t my favourite of hers. One of her flaws is that she does tend to dash things out a little too quickly and this one didn’t seem to have the strength of characterisation that is so strong in the other books I have read. Luke felt a little generic and not as fleshed out as I’d have liked. It is however a good, fun, enjoyable read.

It loosely inspired Neil Gaiman’s American Gods in that he found out his fantastic idea had already been thought up by Diana Wynne Jones. I wonder if the Wallsey in this book is any relation to the town of Wall in Gaiman’s Stardust?

What I do love about her books is that I always feel that they never end and that they just carry on after the pages stop She always leaves you satisfied with the end, but she doesn’t let the characters or the world die, just because that part of the story is over. In that way, her stories are never ending. Diana Wynne Jones created a multi-dimensioned, multi-universed world in Chrestomanci – and in a way that is where all her books are based. In different worlds, different times, split by different histories but all inter-linked. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t need to spend a lot of time explaining the world, because if you read enough of her books, you’re already there.

If you are interested, you can also check out my Time of the Ghost review.

If you’d like to read more Diana Wynne Jones then I whole heartedly recommend Howl’s Moving Castle, Dogsbody and the Dalemark Quartet (starting with Cart and Cwidder), all of which are my favourite.

The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones

Genre: Young Adult
Published: 1981
Pages: 189

Diana Wynne Jones is one of the best, respected, but vastly unknown fantasy authors out there. Despite this trying to find her in a bookshop is like wringing water from a stone. She is overshadowed by all the other fad-of-the-month books, which is such a shame as she’s a good, quality author.

I don’t know why. Maybe it is because she hasn’t really written many big series, apart from Chrestomanci and she can never be trusted to write them in chronological order either. Or maybe it’s because there’s no big love interests, or anything that is really ‘big’ about them.

The Time of the Ghost is one of her earlier books, written in 1981 for older readers.
Something happened, there was an accident – is the only thing the ghost knows when she finds herself bodiless and invisible. She doesn’t know what happened to her, but she has to find out who she is and communicate to one of her sisters what is happening to save one of their lives.

Diana Wynne Jones drew a lot of inspiration from her childhood to put in this book. If you want to read a short autobiography then follow this link. Her parents were basically negligent – ignoring their children even for the most basic of things, even food. It is a common feature in most of her books to have a distracted or negligent parents, but in this one it is almost autobiographical. Diana’s parents ran a place for city boys to come during the holidays and in the book the sisters’ parents ran a boys’ boarding school.

The Time of the Ghost is a spooky little story, quite short at under 200 pages but with a brilliant story packed in. I loved the characters, they felt like my own sisters by the end. It isn’t a spooky story despite being a ghost story, I would say it is more about sibling relationships even beyond the chasm of life and death. Diana is such a good author, I really did feel as if I was actually there, reading one of her books is like being transported.

My one criticism, which is a common one I think for Diana – but never shadows my enjoyment – is that she does tend to leave the details to the end and sometimes this happens all rather too quickly. What I do love about her though is that you can tell that there was a world before the book started and afterwards. It doesn’t feel like it merely exists between the front cover and the back. Her books usually start as if there was something that happened before, and ends at a point when you can still imagine things happening after. That way her stories just continue living forever and ever.

Diana writes with a natural ease of a born story-teller and has a magical ability to appeal to all ages. Many people seem to remain loyal fans well past their childhood, most people who I have met that love Diana Wynne Jones being adults themselves.

I myself came to her when I was nine years old, when I read Dogsbody. It is still my favourite book today, so many many years on in the future. Unfortunately, due to the general dearth of her books in the local library and bookshops, it wasn’t until much later that I got to read another one and then that one was actually the last in the series. (Another thing with her books is that for the most part you can read them in any order as she never writes direct sequels.)

So about five years ago when I was able, I went online and collected up all the books I could find. I still have some of her shorter books to get now – Puss in Boots and others – but for now I still have a good supply of unread books. I’m in no hurry to run out of them either.

Unfortunately, Diana is is not very well at the moment so I’m sending all my best wishes her way.