Howls' Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones

I have a strange fondness for ambulatory or sentient houses. Maybe that’s why I keep picking up Howl’s

Moving Castle for another read. …Or maybe it’s just that good.

When her two sisters go out into the world to find their fortunes, Sophie Hatter stays at home and makes hats, resigned to a boring life. Everybody knows that the heroines of exciting stories aren’t ever about the eldest sister. She accidentally gets on the wrong side of the Witch of the Waste, who visits the hat shop and turns Sophie into an old woman.

Horrified and ashamed to be seen as an old woman, Sophie runs away, and finds shelter in the moving castle of the notoriously wicked Wizard Howl. She makes the acquaintance of his fire demon, who convinces her to stay to free him from his bond to Howl, and eventually meetes Howl himself, who, while certainly overdramatic and prone to shirk responsibility, may not be as wicked as his reputation made him out to be.

Sophie finds a certain freedom in being old, and begins to say her mind and become involved in all the complicated situations Howl has embroiled himself in. But will she be trapped by the Witch of the Waste’s curse forever?

I was thinking about why I keep going back to this book. There’s some appeal in its uniqueness. Diana Wynne Jones has all the normal fantasy things in her stories; she just seems to do different things with them. I think the other thing that I like is that she doesn’t have a drum to beat. Don’t get me wrong; I love a story that communicates a deeper truth, but on my pile of purely-fun books, Howl’s Moving Castle is up at the top.