Eight Days Of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones

The second book in the A Year Of Diana Wynne Jones challenge that I could join in on was this, Eight Days Of Luke. I’m honestly still torn over how I feel about the various covers: some seem a little spoiler-tastic, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I didn’t even look properly at the cover art of the copy I had till I’d started guessing who these strange people are who keep harassing our poor hero David and his new, titular best friend.

David is home for the holidays from a boarding school that he actually quite enjoys, especially in comparison with the miserable set of family he has to come home to. His parents died in an accident long ago, and so he stays with his snobbish Great-Aunt Dot, sickly Great-Uncle Bernard, self-centered Cousin Ronald and Ronald’s peevish wife Astrid. They all seem to consider him a nuisance, which wouldn’t even be so bad except that they keep expecting him to be performatively grateful that they’ve taken on the burden of raising him.

It’s after one particularly distressing family row that David finds himself exiled to the bottom of the garden. He’s angry, bored and determined to come up with the biggest and most impressive curse he can think of to punish his family with. Since he doesn’t actually know any curses or mystical languages, he just decides to make a lot of appropriate-sounding noises till he finds something that sounds right. He doesn’t actually expect anything to happen… until the garden wall falls over and a boy emerges, pursued by snakes.

After helping dispatch the snakes, the boy — who introduces himself as Luke — helps David fix the garden wall, then proceeds to be the best friend a lonely boy could ask for. Luke is fun and easily charms David’s family, even if he does have a strange affinity for fire. Between him and David, they even get Astrid to start focusing less on the negative and start being a good parent, or at least a cool aunt, to her neglected young cousin.

But Luke has people looking for him, due to long-ago crimes that have still gone unsolved. A grateful David is willing to do anything for his friend, but will he be able to figure out why Luke’s people are so angry, and perhaps more importantly how to appease them, before Luke is taken away again for good?

So much excellent story and characterization are packed into this slim volume, touching on topics that mean so much to kids without treating them like Lessons To Be Learned. The whole thing with David’s odious family, for example, was really well done. Kids need to understand that only terrible people try to make children feel bad about being provided for. Astrid’s arc was also a really lovely, realistic look at how anyone can find the courage to change their lives for the better — assuming they have a kernel of courage to begin with, as Cousin Ronald, to David’s shame, clearly does not.

The mythological underpinnings are fascinating, as well. I kept running to Wikipedia to figure out who had done what (there are A LOT of different versions of these myths) but Ms Jones helpfully includes an Afterword to fill in any gaps in her narrative. It was only once I suspected who Luke really was that I paid attention to the cover and its potential spoiler, but I think that people less well-versed with that particular mythology will enjoy the surprises as they unfold.

I’ll be diving into Dogsbody soon, tho am quietly grateful for the skip week coming up next, as I continue to drown (mostly happily, if sometimes anxiously) in books. As I’ve learned from Ms Jones, we often grow up to get exactly what we wish for, tho that’s a discussion for another book.

Eight Days Of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones was published January 1 1975.