Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones. Any new book by Jones is a delicious treat, a reason to put down whatever else I'm doing and curl up with a cup of tea. This one, however, came with special poignancy because I received it just after I learned of her death. So I opened the pages with a kind of sadness, not wanting to admit that in many ways, this was farewell. (If there is another book to be published posthumously, I don't know of it.)
And found magic. Within a few paragraphs, her clear prose and unaffectedly direct storytelling had drawn me into a world in which magicians bequeath not only fine old houses but fields-of-care as well. Only in this case, the old magician left it "rather too late," meaning without personal instruction as to exactly what a field-of-care is and how one cares for it. A few pages later, Andrew Hope is struggling not only with his magical inheritance but with the two classically-Jones abrasive and recalcitrant retainers, Mr. Stock (who expresses his disapproval in the form of boxes of gigantic and inedible vegetables) and Mrs. Stock (no relation to Mr. Stock, who expresses hers by waging war as to the positioning of the piano in the living room). By the time young Aidan (the boy on the rainbow-hued cover) arrived, I had become part of the household as well.
