So ’s daughter was reading Howl’s Moving Castle when I saw her last. After she finished it and I’d finished my book, I picked it up. I was decidedly put out when she took it back with her, and even more so when I found that my library’s only copy was checked out. As a consolation, I took this other book, not new but previously unread by me.

Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones Fantasy plays different roles even in fantasy books set in our world. In this one, the real world predominates, the magical elements slipping in so subtly that they are easy to miss until the very end. Polly, now about 19, is visiting her Granny and looking at a picture on her wall. It brings back memories of the man she met when she was there nine years before, when she accidentally gate-crashed a will reading at the big house up the hill. She realizes that she has two complete sets of memories. In one of them, she and Mr. Lynn had an ongoing correspondence and occasional visits. In the other, he never existed. Now, even the other people in her life who met him can’t remember him. The book is largely made up of her newly-found memories of him, and the stories they made up together about Mr. Lynn being a hero named Tan Coul and Polly his apprentice, Hero. But the stories had a strange way of coming true, not quite the way they told them and usually in a way that put them in more danger than the original. Only near the end does Polly realize Thomas Lynn in danger and needs her help.

And here is where my difficulty began. The characters – Polly, her crazed mother and forceful Granny, the friends she made over the years, were compelling,. Each chapter began with bits from the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, so that someone familiar with these, as I am, could probably figure out where the story was going. But it never quite made sense to me. I never understood why the bad guy was opposed to them, and even after Polly solved the puzzle, I didn’t get the solution. I’ve been thinking about it for days now, and I still don’t. Is this just me or the book? If anyone has read this and could help me out, I’d be much obliged.