Fire and Hemlock

This is quite literally the book that made me decide to become a writer.

It draws on two Scottish ballads (“Tam Lin” and “Thomas the Rhymer”), but rather than retelling them straight, it uses them as a springboard for its own original plot. The relationship between the two main characters and the story they are telling together instilled in me a burning desire to tell my own stories for other people to read, and it also sent me off down a lifelong path of reading about the folklore that underpins the novels I pick up.

Diana Wynne Jones was a wonderful woman who always responded to my questions in a tidy hand, delighting a little boy who had made himself an author pen-pal. When a twelve-year-old Brian begged for a copy of her Fire and Hemlock—my library suffered a flood and its copy, lost—the best she could procure for the out-of-print book was a solitary copy she possessed… in Japanese. Our correspondence lasted several letters, topics ranging the gamut from life in England, the University of Oxford, and writing in general. It’s a retelling of the Scottish ballad, “Tam Lin,” and stars a… show more.

I’ve been a fan of Diana Wynne Jones since I was seven. Once I’d discovered her, I tore through her entire back catalogue, but Fire and Hemlock is the book that stuck. It didn’t make complete sense to me at the time, but its atmosphere lingered at the back of my mind for days. Since then I’ve revisited it on a regular basis, and I find something new in each reread. Without giving too much away, it earns its place on this list by virtue of being a semi-retelling of the old Scottish ballad Tam Lin, the entire… show more.