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finesilkflower 's review for:
Howl's Moving Castle
by Diana Wynne Jones
On the whole I was delighted by this novel. Inventive, lovable characters inhabit a fairy-tale-ish setting that is peppered with bizarre elements that add richness and novelty. Diana Wynne Jones throws a lot at you and expects you to keep up.
Sophie Hatter is a hardworking young hatmaker who gets on the wrong side of a witch and is cursed to turn elderly before her time. She leaves town and stumbles upon the mysterious moving castle of the notorious wizard Howl, who is said to eat the hearts of young women. Emboldened by no longer being a young woman, Sophie talks her way into the household as the cleaning lady, which Howl sorely needs because despite being powerful and important and ethereally gorgeous, his house is a total sty.
I love the way the novel uses fairy tale elements to explore interesting and nuanced real-world concepts - ones that I have not frequently seen in other YA/fantasy novels. In an interview on the movie special features, Diana Wynne Jones explained that the idea for Sophie came about when she became disabled and had to use a cane in her 40s, and experience that made her feel prematurely aged. The book inventively uses the curse to make interesting observations about the ways that aging can both enfeeble and embolden you, and the way that sudden disability can cause you to reflect on your life and change your relationship to work.
Work and exploitation are major themes. I realized this book would go hard early on when Sophie is explaining to her sister that she has to work hard to repay the kindness of their stepmother and the sister says "A person doesn't have to be unkind to you to exploit you." Soon, Sophie is able to take in a similar situation from the outside when she meets Calcifer, the fire demon indentured to Howl. Although Sophie herself volunteers to work for Howl (and she works hard despite his not asking her to and not actually wanting his house cleaned), she feels different about it when she is able to choose the work and discover her unique talents.
I found the ending a little disappointing because the magic gets so complex that it's hard to follow and the books themes aren't carried through in a way that feels satisfying, but I think it's only because the beginning writes such a large check that it's hard to cash. In a short form I will say that my (much shorter) review of 'Dealing With Dragons' applies to this book too: "I like the genre of 'cleaning and organizing wish fulfillment fantasy,' but I do feel uneasy when characters only seem to have the choices between one form of exploitation and another."
Book vs Movie
It's hard not to compare it to the Studio Ghibli movie that I was initially more familiar with. The basic elements of the setup are the same:
Where the book and movie diverge is that Hiyao Miyazaki makes it about war. The Miyazaki setting is more steampunk and higher-tech, and he adds a war plotline, high-intensity war imagery including scenes of Howl fighting bombs as a giant bird and a sequence where the town burns down and the characters have to escape. Since watching "The Boy and the Heron," said to be the most autobiographical of Miyazaki's films, it's clear that the materials that Miyazaki added was very personal to him, reflecting formative experiences of being caught in a town that's on fire during WWII and some kind of traumatic experience with a bird. The two sets of ideas - Wynne Jones's novel and Miyazaki's anti-war message - don't entirely fit together.
It is Sophie's story that I feel is most shafted by the movie. Her curse is the throughline of the book (and the beginning of the movie), but the movie becomes uninterested in it at about the halfway point. Although she continues to visually, gradually de-age in a satisfying way, it feels incidental to the movie's greater interest in Howl and the war. In the book, Sophie becomes more important as the book goes on and she discovers her own magic; the fact that she's magical is not even mentioned in the movie and without it, a lot of explanation is lost (for example, why things she talks to tend to become sentient).
The novel also more convincingly paints a picture of Howl's flaws; he passive-aggressively evades being pinned down to any decision or obligation no matter how small. He is a "slither-outer," as Sophie describes his pathological demand avoidance. The Miyazaki film paints him as quite reasonably opposed to war, which makes his refusal to follow orders a noble quality. It's interesting to see a character who is superficially vain and silly also painted as noble and principled (and the novel Howl is also noble in his moments), but the novel characterization feels more cohesive. Both works make the case that Howl's dirty house and magical tantrums are rooted in depression and neurodivergence, though the novel explores it more.
The movie does lose one storyline that I don't mind losing from the book: there are some bizarre parts where one of the doors in Howl's castle opens up on modern-day Wales. In ways that the other characters don't understand, but we do, it is revealed that he is from the modern world. While there is something interesting about the idea of a reverse portal fantasy (where the POV character is from the fantasy world and our world is on the other side of the portal), ultimately I found this element corny and suspension-of-disbelief-breaking.
On the whole, I tend to prefer the storyline and themes of the book, but the movie adds so much in terms of the beautiful art and character design, and the design of the castle, which is unlike Wynne Jones' description but extremely memorable and unique.
Sophie Hatter is a hardworking young hatmaker who gets on the wrong side of a witch and is cursed to turn elderly before her time. She leaves town and stumbles upon the mysterious moving castle of the notorious wizard Howl, who is said to eat the hearts of young women. Emboldened by no longer being a young woman, Sophie talks her way into the household as the cleaning lady, which Howl sorely needs because despite being powerful and important and ethereally gorgeous, his house is a total sty.
I love the way the novel uses fairy tale elements to explore interesting and nuanced real-world concepts - ones that I have not frequently seen in other YA/fantasy novels. In an interview on the movie special features, Diana Wynne Jones explained that the idea for Sophie came about when she became disabled and had to use a cane in her 40s, and experience that made her feel prematurely aged. The book inventively uses the curse to make interesting observations about the ways that aging can both enfeeble and embolden you, and the way that sudden disability can cause you to reflect on your life and change your relationship to work.
Work and exploitation are major themes. I realized this book would go hard early on when Sophie is explaining to her sister that she has to work hard to repay the kindness of their stepmother and the sister says "A person doesn't have to be unkind to you to exploit you." Soon, Sophie is able to take in a similar situation from the outside when she meets Calcifer, the fire demon indentured to Howl. Although Sophie herself volunteers to work for Howl (and she works hard despite his not asking her to and not actually wanting his house cleaned), she feels different about it when she is able to choose the work and discover her unique talents.
I found the ending a little disappointing because the magic gets so complex that it's hard to follow and the books themes aren't carried through in a way that feels satisfying, but I think it's only because the beginning writes such a large check that it's hard to cash. In a short form I will say that my (much shorter) review of 'Dealing With Dragons' applies to this book too: "I like the genre of 'cleaning and organizing wish fulfillment fantasy,' but I do feel uneasy when characters only seem to have the choices between one form of exploitation and another."
Book vs Movie
It's hard not to compare it to the Studio Ghibli movie that I was initially more familiar with. The basic elements of the setup are the same:
Where the book and movie diverge is that Hiyao Miyazaki makes it about war. The Miyazaki setting is more steampunk and higher-tech, and he adds a war plotline, high-intensity war imagery including scenes of Howl fighting bombs as a giant bird and a sequence where the town burns down and the characters have to escape. Since watching "The Boy and the Heron," said to be the most autobiographical of Miyazaki's films, it's clear that the materials that Miyazaki added was very personal to him, reflecting formative experiences of being caught in a town that's on fire during WWII and some kind of traumatic experience with a bird. The two sets of ideas - Wynne Jones's novel and Miyazaki's anti-war message - don't entirely fit together.
It is Sophie's story that I feel is most shafted by the movie. Her curse is the throughline of the book (and the beginning of the movie), but the movie becomes uninterested in it at about the halfway point. Although she continues to visually, gradually de-age in a satisfying way, it feels incidental to the movie's greater interest in Howl and the war. In the book, Sophie becomes more important as the book goes on and she discovers her own magic; the fact that she's magical is not even mentioned in the movie and without it, a lot of explanation is lost (for example, why things she talks to tend to become sentient).
The novel also more convincingly paints a picture of Howl's flaws; he passive-aggressively evades being pinned down to any decision or obligation no matter how small. He is a "slither-outer," as Sophie describes his pathological demand avoidance. The Miyazaki film paints him as quite reasonably opposed to war, which makes his refusal to follow orders a noble quality. It's interesting to see a character who is superficially vain and silly also painted as noble and principled (and the novel Howl is also noble in his moments), but the novel characterization feels more cohesive. Both works make the case that Howl's dirty house and magical tantrums are rooted in depression and neurodivergence, though the novel explores it more.
The movie does lose one storyline that I don't mind losing from the book: there are some bizarre parts where one of the doors in Howl's castle opens up on modern-day Wales. In ways that the other characters don't understand, but we do, it is revealed that he is from the modern world. While there is something interesting about the idea of a reverse portal fantasy (where the POV character is from the fantasy world and our world is on the other side of the portal), ultimately I found this element corny and suspension-of-disbelief-breaking.
On the whole, I tend to prefer the storyline and themes of the book, but the movie adds so much in terms of the beautiful art and character design, and the design of the castle, which is unlike Wynne Jones' description but extremely memorable and unique.