Furthermore, the opening chapter about Sophie’s life is reminiscent of Cinderella‘s tale, without Sophie having bad relationships with her relatives and siblings, fated to create hats her whole life long. To begin with, doesn’t the name of the Witch of the Waste remind you of someone? It could be this other sorceress straight out from « The Wonderful Wizard of Oz » whose name is interestingly the Witch of the West. But Jones knows them so well, that she easily explores them, reshuffes them and goes even further by subverting them, which is truly refreshing and remarkable to me. It would be nearly impossible to write about all of the astonishing surprises and elements that this story incorporates, so I will tell those I am the most amazed of.įirst of all, there are many fairytales connections. It may just sounds like a foolish little tale, but it’s more than that. But who is really Howl? Why is he so difficult to pin down? Can Sophie trust this mischievous fire crackling on the hearth? How does the castle manage to be in 4 locations in the same time? And does the jars in the bathroom labelled HAIR, SKIN and EYES contain limbs of unfortunate girls who came too close to the wizard? Furthermore, she will have to handle Howl himself, who is so vain that he spends hours in the bathroom before going out, his young helper Michael and Calcifer, the talking fire… Becoming Howl’s housemaid only becomes possible after setting an uncanny bargain with the demon-fire in the hearth: although she can’t speak about the spell she is under, Calcifer knows it and agrees to give her back her appearance if she manages to discover and break the contract that links him up with Howl. And since she aged so much, she isn’t scared anymore. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the always-moving castle seenable from her hat shop: the Wizard Howl’s Castle. Nonetheless, Sophie unwillingly attracts the Witch of the Waste’s anger and finds herself stuck into an old lady’s body. Or some people said he ate their hearts. » At first afraid that it would belong to the dreadful Witch of the Waste, the townspeople are then soon saying that its owner is the wizard Howl, who can’t help but have fun « collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Sophie is resigning herself to live a dull life making hats as it will follow for sure, while her sisters both live exciting existences, until a moving castle appears on the hills above the town and refuses to stay motionless. You see, as everyone in this land knows, succeeding in the role of fortune-seeker is reserved to the youngest children and the eldest are merely those who fail first, if not even worse… Actually, we first hear of our eponymous wizard in the first chapter, where Jones teases the well-known clichés of the fantastic genre, as the land of Ingary is depicted as a place « where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist« . For Sophie, being born eldest of three is just enough to be the beginning of her troubles. Their father owns a a hat shop in the town of Market Chipping, in Ingrary. The protagonist of this story is seventeen-years-old Sophie Hatter, the eldest of three sisters. The movie you may know was actually inspired by a British book written by Diana Wynne Jones, who published over 30 books. Have you ever heard of Howl’s Moving Castle? Maybe you have, but I would be surprised if it really was about the book and not the equally wonderful but rather different motion picture created by the internationally acclamed Hayao Miyazaki. However, the book I would like to talk about contains its share of mystery, involving a wizard with odd habits, a door opening to four different places, a sweaty young-looking witch, a young girl in disguise and even a fire-demon… One of those bewitched books whose worlds feel like weird but mesmerizing places you visited with a pounding heart but that you know so well that they are now as many shelters. No need of a magic wand, simply one of those book that you read a long time ago. Don’t you think that we all need a bit of wizardry from time to time? I sometimes find it delightful to go back in time, and it’s easier to do than you might think.
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