so I’m reading Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones for the first time, and of course it’s great—it turns out that I highly recommend leaving a couple books by your favorite YA author, especially adult-targeted books, unread in your initial feral middle school rush to read everything they’ve ever written, as a little treat for later in life. I mean, I’m actively struggling to keep reading because she’s displaying a knowledge of sff cons so acute that I feel like I’m being stabbed with a blade of pure fuckor every third paragraph. But it’s great.
What stands out most, in this and in A Sudden Wild Magic, her other adult novel which I also hadn’t read until this week, is how uniquely skilled DWJ is at writing characters who are simultaneously thoroughly endearing and the most annoying, parodical & parodiable person you could ever conceive of meeting. She manages to portray people this way both when the POV is from their own heads AND in exterior view.
I think I’m really noticing this for the first time because these characters are fully new to me, so I’m learning them from the ground up. It may also shine more as she gets into multi-pov books in the 90’s, where it’s emphasized by having the internal and external view. But it IS a hallmark of her writing, and truly, it’s every character, in every book. Nobody escapes being ridiculous, and only the worst of villains aren’t a little bit…not “sympathetic” or “fun”, though they are that. But I really think “endearing” is the right word. DWJ was always down to mercilessly mock someone, but it was usually done with some amount of affection, and recognition of their wholeness as a person.
