Fire and Hemlock
First edition (US)
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| Author | Diana Wynne Jones |
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| Country | Great Britain |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher |
Greenwillow Books (US) Methues (UK) |
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Publication date
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1984 (US) 1985 (UK) |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | |
Fire and Hemlock is a modern fantasy by British author Diana Wynne Jones based largely on the Scottish ballads "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer."
It was first published in 1984 in the United States by Greenwillow Books then in 1985 in Great Britain by Methuen Children's Books It has been republished several times since then in paperback, by various publishers. In-print versions are published by Collins in Britain and by HarperTeen in the United States, both divisions of HarperCollins. Firebird, an imprint of Penguin Group, released a new paperback edition on 12 April 2012.
Fire and Hemlock was a Phoenix Award Honor Book in 2005.
As she clears out her old bedroom, Polly discovers that below her memories, in which she led an entirely normal and unremarkable life, there is a second set of memories, which are rather unusual.
As Polly thinks back to this "second set" of memories, the point where they seem to diverge is when she stumbled into a funeral in an old mansion, Hunsdon House, when she was ten and playing with her best friend, Nina. There, she was approached by a man named Thomas Lynn who took her back outside and kept her company. He takes her back inside to help him select six pictures from a large pile, his share of the estate of the deceased; one of them is a photograph called "Fire and Hemlock" (hence the name of the novel), which he gave to her. He then takes her back to her grandmother's house, where she is living.
Over the following years Tom and Polly continue a friendship largely through correspondence, with occasional visits. Tom sends her books and letters with stories in them, many of which tie into the general theme of his predicament. Together, the two come up with stories about a hero named Tan Coul and his assistant Hero, who are Mr. Lynn's and Polly's alter egos, respectively. These stories all eventually come true, after a fashion. For instance, after discussing Tan Coul's horse, they encounter an identical horse disrupting traffic in the streets of London, having escaped from a nearby circus. An invented town and hardware store later turn out to be real, the proprietor being the spitting image of Tom, and his nephew Leslie falling into the story much later as a possible victim of Laurel's. Tom and Polly's story features three other heroes; later on, Tom gives Polly a photograph of all the members of his orchestra, and asks her to identify them. She immediately finds the other three heroes. These three are exactly the ones with whom Tom was considering setting up an independent string quartet.
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