Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I do not remotely have coherent thoughts about this but let’s see what I have and see if, perhaps, some order comes of it. The first thing to say is that I am not particularly familiar with Diana Wynne Jones but I have always appreciated and indeed, admired the titles that I’ve come across. I like what she does and I like how she does it and I find her interesting. Her writing is so strange and intriguing to me. It kind of feels known but unknown, as if I understand it in one moment and then lose it in the next and then find it all over again before I even realise I’ve lost it.
So there, so this: a kind of intimate, domestic, known strangeness where things happen and it is up to others to resolve them, to right the wrongs, to kind of address these great fissures in the world. The subplot about weight bothered me. The final beat of this bothered me entirely, immensely. What else? I like her eye for character, a lot. I like her eye for the moor, I love moors in books, I absolutely do. I live for this sort of wildness. I liked how she pulled the rug from under my feet. I like how she wrote this in such a lively, smart, fiercely knowledgeable kind of way that was the only sort of way that this book could have been written. I like the fact that I couldn’t have written this book in a month of Sundays. I like her grasp on masculinity. I like the way she writes boys. Actually, I think I like that a lot. I like how her boys scrabble for space against the men, all of these voices and people trying to find their foothold within the world.
I like how the ending felt like a spell being cast of its own, a word laid on a tempestuous river, a storm stilled. I loved how open people were to otherness and how they could accept their fate in a story that they did not, perhaps, know or understand. I liked the faith that people could place in others, the home they could find in the stranger. I liked how much it knew itself and how much it wanted to be. But I don’t know if I liked it? I guess, perhaps, I admired it? I appreciated it?
Strange to finish in questions, but then when something gives you everything that it is then maybe questions are all that you can give it in return.
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Daisy May Johnson 
You know I wrote my PhD thesis on Diana Wynne Jones, right? Power of Three is not my absolute favourite, but I always liked it a lot. I know what you mean about weight – it’s her one tragic flaw, a bit of meanness about overweight people. She does do boys well, but then she had sons. I think I love this book most for the way she pulls the rug out from under you. She may have been mean about weight, but she’s certainly taking a stand against prejudice and even racism in a way.
Yes, her point about racism and prejudice is very pointedly and smartly made. I absolutely loved how smart she is in this in making something that seems so very far away being actually intensely close and local and *your* problem.