If you like: fantasy, magic, humor, Gail Carson Levine, Ursula K. Le Guin, Studio Ghibli.
Day 40: In which Maggie tries her best to explain why she loves fantasy novel Howl’s Moving Castle so much, with mixed results.
It’s odd-couple Sophie and Howl who the book so amazing and un-putdownable. Jones has said in an interview, "I think people who don’t have any faults are very boring. Your faults are a large part of what you are like as a person.” And Sophie and Howl have many faults.
Sophie is an eldest sister of three and, based on the narrative inevitability of fairy tales, she thinks she will never become much of anything. It isn’t until Sophie gets cursed into an old woman that she finally finds the freedom to behave as she pleases—nosy, stubborn, and sometimes selfish.
“It was odd. As a girl, Sophie would have shriveled with embarrassment at the way she was behaving. As an old woman, she did not mind what she did or said. She found that a great relief.”
Then Howl is vain, dramatic, and an enormous crybaby. What makes Howl and Sophie worth rooting for is their empathy and care for the people around them. Howl takes in an orphan and a fire demon and a cursed cleaning lady, Sophie takes care of her sisters, and both of them always try to make right choices, no matter how scary the repercussions may be.
(Even if Howl has to trick himself into doing daunting things: “I’m a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I’m not doing it!”)
Along with the dynamic of practical-Sophie with impractical-Howl, there’s a lot of great humor in Howl’s Moving Castle. Howl leaks green slime when he’s throwing a fit, Sophie uses a frying pan to bully the fire demon that is sequestered inside the moving castle, and there’s an incident with magic traveling boots that sends Sophie zipping all over the land of Ingary.
In Ingary, magic touches all of the character’s lives in one way or another. There are deathly curses, hair-color potions, spells that bargain with demons; but what ties all of the magic together is the caster’s intent. I love how Jones shows our own magic is what we make of it. Sophie’s words have power. When she says negative things as she’s working, there are negative outcomes, and positive outcomes when she puts more faith in herself.
Howl’s Moving Castle is whimsical in a way that isn’t contrived. There’s a genuine warmth to the wit in Jones’ writing. Reading this book always makes me feel like I’m revisiting a favorite book from my childhood, even though I didn’t pick it up until I was in my early 20s.
And really, I should have read it much sooner. One of my favorite scenes comes at the end, when Sophie and Howl are racing back to his castle on a big bluster of wind. There’s a lot of yelling, and professing, but it gave me the perfect thing to holler at my loved ones when they struggle with self-doubt:
“Sophie shrieked, ‘I’m a failure!’
‘Garbage!’ Howl shouted.”
"Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones; HarperCollins; 1986.
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