36. unexpected magic: a eulogy

it's hard to find words today, when the sudden sorrow i feel over learning of a favorite author's death (last march, without me knowing) seems so incongruous with the easygoing normalcy here in the office.

last night, i read myself to sleep finishing everard's ride by diana wynne jones, the last novella in her collection entitled unexpected magic (greenwillow, 2002). it was classic jones: witty, daring, and surprising. jones understands a child's psyche in a way that is conspiratory and never condescending, and she is always benevolently aware of your own fears and hopes. she wrote everard's ride, a story of two children who find themselves active participants in the drama and medieval politics of a strange land, way back in the 1970s. it was like all the best stories, still relevant and always moving after decades of existence, every word a door to a universe of meanings. i went to sleep happy and content in the magic she had woven like a cocoon, and looked forward to discovering more of her works (for she was rather prolific).

this morning, the news of her death. lung cancer in 2009 until she'd stopped with chemotherapy because she claimed it her made ill. (writing this now makes me cry.:( ) having read her chrestomanci series last year changed how i viewed harry potter forever, the latter i now see as an immensely more popular, unacknowledged but very obvious, homage to jones' rolicking genius.

diana wynne jones has been writing some of the best fantasy children's stories for the past thirty years. i know reading her from now on would be different. it would be tinged with sorrow and regret for the many stories i believe she still had in her, stories i will always wish i could still read, scour the bookstores for when i need real comfort, and pluck out of my bookshelf for remembered adventures. but it would also be the same. all her stories that need to be told have been written, and her body of work is beautiful, magical, and kind.

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neil gaiman on diana:

She was the funniest, wisest, fiercest, sharpest person I've known, a witchy and wonderful woman, intensely practical, filled with opinions, who wrote the best books about magic, who wrote the finest and most perceptive letters, who hated the telephone but would still talk to me on it if I called, albeit, always, nervously, as if she expected the phone she was holding to explode. [here's looking at you, cor.: )]


I do miss her, very much. I have some wonderful friends. I have people in my life who are brilliant, and people who are colourful, and people who are absolutely wonderful, and who make the world better for their being in it. But there was only one Diana Wynne Jones, and the world was a finer one for having her in it.

Diana Wynne Jones, a cat person : )