Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting (literally!), disturbing, yet comical ghost story, 11 Jun 2001
By A Customer
Diana Wynne Jones's characters are always down-to-earth, real people - warts and all - in slightly skewed worlds. This story is a portrait of four girls neglected by their parents, seen through the eyes of a ghost who thinks she is one of them, but is not sure which! The characters of the sisters are explored in a sensitive yet realistic - and humorous! way. As the story unfolds we discover more about the circumstances leading to the ghost's existence, and it builds to an unexpected and satisfying denouement. Wonderfully written.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not her best, but still intriguing, 9 May 2005
I don't want to spoil the plot of this book, because the first chapter is so atmospheric and Jones hides the problem of her heroine so cleverly. In fact, the first part of the book is very atmospheric and very clever; it's only in the second part that things start to unravel, because you have a POV twist which doesn't quite work, and at the end of the story you're left scratching your head wondering what happened. Of course, those who liked it will go back and read again. Unlike 'Fire and Hemlock', the mythology in 'The Time of the Ghost' is not so strong - actually, I wish she'd expanded upon this, as it only appears in the second part of the story. It would have perhaps added a deeper layer to the story, which ends up being rather like the film 'The Craft' (although this book was written before that). Oh, and if you don't believe that four girls could be this neglected by their own parents, Diane Wynne Jones based the girls' situation on her *own childhood* with her younger sister, and actually left out some incidents because she thought that people wouldn't believe them! (Like the youngest sister, she did her hair in knots and waited to see how long it would take for her mother to notice - apparently, it took her mother two weeks.) It's not her best, but it's still a brilliant read!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of her very best, 18 Jun 2007
I'm a fan of Diana Wynne Jones and this book is one of her strongest and strangest. She writes for several different age groups (all her books are entertaining for adults): this one is probably for teens and up, because it is among her more complex and emotionally demanding works. My favourite Diana Wynne Jones books have a trick of picking themselves up and shaking themselves so that matters turn out to be wholly different from how you first thought they were. Hexwood, Archer's Goon, and Fire and Hemlock, as well as The Time of the Ghost, all do this supremely well. There is a tremendous pleasure in tracing such bravura plotting and in the imaginative detective work needed to work out the rules of each fictional world, but a particular view of character and moral development also emerges: DWJ's characters find out startling things about themselves and about each other, suddenly perceiving new viewpoints and sometimes changing as suddenly. The Time of the Ghost juxtaposes members of a disfunctional family with their older selves, showing how immensely they have changed but also showing how bad early choices - choices about personal relationships as much as about the supernatural side of things - have continued to hurt them. The book offers a wonderfully complicated plot and a powerful, dark atmosphere but also emotional truth. Highly recommended.
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