One of the more prominent features in the works of Diana Wynne Jones is the presence of heterotopia. This can manifest as the existence of multiple worlds (in the Chrestomanci series and The Homeward Bounders), multiple realities (in Hexwood and Fire and Hemlock) and a world within a world (in Deep Secret).1 The reason heterotopia in fantasy has so much appeal, I think, is that it is often a powerful expression of wish fulfilment. That can be as simple as the desire for novelty, to escape one’s surroundings and situation. It also allows us to re-imagine what could have happened if circumstances had been different or if one made another choice. On a deeper level, it can express more than one truth. The multiplicity of realities may reflect a character’s inner reality.2

In her essay, Heterotopia as a Reflection of Postmodern Consciousness in the Works of Diana Wynne Jones3, Maria Nikolajeva explores heterotopia as a representation of a character’s split self and perception of their reality. In particular, heterotopia may represent a character's mindscape.

She notes:

Almost every work by Jones has at least one character divided between several realities, physically, mentally or emotionally. [According to ideas developed by] contemporary mythical criticism, fiction is a mindscape, a reflection of internal life rather than of any external reality. In fantasy, especially, there are good reasons to interpret the events and happenings as a mindscape, since they do not have any direct connection to life as we know it. Heterotopia then becomes a reflection of the adolescent’s chaotic worldview. Defamiliarization indicates the emotions of young people faced with a new, unfamiliar, and disturbing phase in their lives. The uncontrolled and uncontrollable magic is yet another component of the instability of the young protagonists’ psyches.

This post will focus on A Tale of Time City and Deep Secret. While both involve heterotopia, the worlds in the former are primarily separated in time, whereas those in the latter are separated in space.

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A Tale of Time City

A Tale of Time City starts during the Second World War. The protagonist Vivian Smith is being evacuated to the countryside, where she is supposed to stay with a relative she has never met. When she arrives at the station, however, she is abducted by two boys who have mistaken her for the legendary Time Lady and taken to a place called Time City, the main heterotopia in the novel. It is there that “she finds herself totally outside time as we know it … from where a group of cold-blooded rulers observe and interfere with human history.”

War is a traumatic experience for Vivian, who has had to cope with changing routines in an uncertain future, food rations, blackouts, air-raids, gas attacks and anxiety about being separated from her parents. Her adventures in Time City can thus be seen as an externalised projection of her mindscape:

The fantasy mode in A Tale of Time City adds to the depiction of trauma, suggesting that Otherworld is a projection … externalization - of the protagonist’s fears and anxieties in the shadow of war. Her internal images become concrete settings and people of Otherworld. The idea of time being non-linear and malleable - clearly a postmodern element - adds to the overall sense of insecurity.

We can also read her adventures as a desire for agency, order and a safe space to contemplate her situation. As a child in wartime London, Vivian has no real agency to change her world. However, in Time City,

Vivian is endowed with the power to restore the universal order as she, together with her companions, roams the multitude of timespaces in search of the magical devices which will secure the eternal existence of Time City … If we interpret Time City as Vivian’s mindscape, her empowerment reflects her deep desire to be able to restore order on a more modest scale, to be back with her family and in time of peace … Vivian’s escape into timelessness gives her a break to contemplate and accept the reality of war.

It may be significant that their search for those magical devices leads them to time-travel to Unstable Eras, periods in history in which small things can change the course of history. If the heterotopia here represent the eleven-year-old Vivian’s mindscape, and eras represent phases in one’s life, Unstable Eras can be seen as a metaphor for a confusing, unstable or changeable state of adolescence: a crucial period in her life that can change the literal course of her life’s history. Vivian, too, realises that Time City is in an Unstable Era,

without a fixed future, which means that they can fail … Further, Vivian watches herself acting differently on three separate occasions in her own time, September 1939, as she steps off the evacuee train. The young person’s uncertainty about the future - and by extension the present, and perhaps even the past - is demonstrated through what seems mere adventure. In fact, Vivian realizes that “she has been treating everything that happened as an adventure. And it had suddenly turned very serious indeed.” Heterotopia thus becomes directly connected with the confused, multiple subjectivity of the protagonist.

During one of these time-travelling missions, Vivian and her companions end up in the Mind Wars. Unlike conventional warfare, the Mind Wars are quiet; mind-warriors attack their targets’ minds. Warriors on rafts fight their enemies “furiously without any sound except the thin whistling of the mind.” Caught in the middle of a battle-scene, Vivian perceives “Ripples … bringing calm voices of madness, giggles of rage, hymns of nastiness, screams of exhaustion, tinkles of death, whistles of despair, and loud songs of horror. And none of it made a sound. Vivian had to lie on the cold ground and bear it, in all its back-to-front nothingness.” That her mind can perceive all these despite the soundlessness signifies the anguish of a mindscape. Here, the suffering is internal. There is also advanced technology from the Mind Wars that enables its users to control others’ minds.

The attack on one’s mind is reminiscent of psychological warfare deployed during WWII. On a more personal level, this may be a metaphor for an adolescent’s vulnerability to lies, manipulation and misinformation. For a more contemporary analogy, we only need to observe how influencers like Andrew Tate have manipulated the minds of young people.

There is another form of heterotopia here, more virtual than embodied: in legends and films, which Vivian and Jonathan are obsessed with. Initially these obsessions are more escapist, though they have their uses. It is after all a legend that inspires Jonathan to save Time City. For Vivian on the other hand, life in Time City initially feels unreal. She regularly compares her situation to an adventure or film to comfort herself and to have a frame of reference to help her cope with disorientation in a new and unfamiliar world with an uncertain future.

She was in Time City, in the middle of a horrendous mistake. Oddly enough, although this was quite frightening, Vivian found it rather exciting too. She had always wanted to have an adventure, the way people did in films. And here she was having one. She knew it was no dream.

As time goes on, Vivian’s adventures feel less and less like part of a film, as she realises the seriousness of her situation. A key aspect of Vivian’s internal development in Time City, the main heterotopia, is illustrated by her encounter with the glamorous Leon Hardy. When she is first introduced to him, she notices how much he looks like a film star. But this marks a shift from her obsession with films. Instead of being enthralled by him, Vivian wonders “why it was that people you could admire perfectly well as film stars were the people you didn’t quite like in real life.” Significantly, the films that she has watched from her original timeline are fictional. It is also a medium that depends disproportionately on more external factors such as visual appearance and glamour - a visual projection rather than a mode of interiority. That Vivian comes to this realisation in Time City may reflect her growing engagement with her inner life as she contemplates others’ motivations rather than external dazzle.

Reinforcing the idea of the split self and supporting the heterotopic imagery in a more tangible manner is Vivian’s literal adoption of another identity. As she has entered Time City illegally, she is forced to pose as Jonathan’s cousin, Vivian Lee, a native of Time City. But it is a public identity she is not comfortable with, as an outsider who knows very little about the ways of Time City. At the same time, she is trying hard not to forget who she is and where she belongs. She must balance between two identities: her social identity (ostensibly as Vivian Lee), and her true, more internal self as Vivian Smith from WWII London. Yet she does not feel thoroughly at home anywhere. Although she misses her parents and clings onto her personal past of 20th century London, she does not look forward to the trauma of war.

This split between her inner and external identities is reminiscent of the split in identity during adolescence, when one may feel as if they consist of different disconnected selves. It is a time when people often try to find or cultivate their true selves, and experiment with new identities, whether as a goth, a punk or an otaku. If you came from a strict and incurious family dismissive of non-utilitarian pursuits, for example, you might have sought escape and meaning in pursuits that became part of your identity, especially if you struggled to relate to your surroundings.

Deep Secret

In Deep Secret, Jones explicitly introduces us to the concept of the multiverse. There are worlds which lean Ayewards, in which magic is a part of everyday life; and more rational Naywards worlds, which include our own Earth, in which magic is despised, disbelieved in and/or persecuted. Rupert Venables, the protagonist, is a Magid, one of the magical agents assigned to resolve major issues in specific worlds to “push history.” In his case, these are Earth (where he comes from) and the Koryfonic Empire. At the beginning he has just returned from America, where he “managed to push the right people into sorting out some kind of peace in the former Yugoslavia and Northern Island.”

As a Magid moving between worlds with different attitudes to magic, Rupert has effectively two different identities. He cannot openly express his magical self on his native Earth, where he also lives. There his public identity is that of a software designer (his actual day job). In the more Ayewards Koryfonic Empire, where he is open about his Magid status, he is recognised as a figure of authority; he frequently deals with other figures of authority such as the Emperor and Acting Regent. But he is also an outsider there. Much of his authority is more symbolic than real, as he is not involved in day-to-day matters, and has no real power to intervene in many aspects of their society such as unjust trials and executions.

Much of the novel revolves around Rupert’s efforts to find a new junior Magid for Earth, after the death of his mentor Stan, a more senior Magid. Stan has compiled a list of five candidates from the Upper Room, a higher authority that the Magids report to. In order to observe and interview the candidates more easily, Rupert magically tweaks their fatelines to gather them in one place. They all end up attending a fantasy and science fiction convention called PhantasmaCon in the Hotel Babylon in Wantchester.

It is in this search for a new Magid that the theme of divided selves takes centre stage. It is implied that magical gifts on Earth can result in unbalanced personalities. Although possessing the strongest untrained magical talent on Earth, all the candidates noticeably struggle with balance in their lives or personalities. This may hint at disharmony between their magical and public selves in a world that is hostile to magic and provides no outlet or acknowledgement for such gifts. If we read the PhantasmaCon as a mindscape, this may reflect a disconnect between inner and outer selves. Especially if being magical on Earth is often associated with unusual or marginalised traits, a concept which Jones explores deeply in Witch Week.

One of Rupert’s candidates, Tansy-Ann Fisk, is a New Age mystic implied to frequent clinics, engage with dubious forms of mysticism, and regularly pressure unwilling strangers to let her read their psychic auras. When Rupert caustically remarks that she is “probably having a nervous breakdown,” Stan (who has returned as a ghost to advise Rupert) points out:

“It’s the penalty of being odd when most people are normal. We might have gone the same way, you and me, if we hadn’t been picked out for Magids.”

On Mervin Thurless, another candidate known for his foul temper, Rupert speculates that “he had been unbalanced by having the sort of gifts that make a person a potential Magid. It is bad, having those gifts and not knowing how to use them. I know I was pretty difficult myself as a student because of this.”

In the case of Maree Mallory, the disconnect between inner and outer, magical and ordinary selves is particularly apparent. Her various selves feel disharmonious; she does not fit in anywhere. This is reflected in the other characters’ attitudes to her. Rupert is “wildly attracted to the sense of Maree” - a sense that is more magical - that he has got from the first letter she has written to him, though he does not realise this at the time. At this point he has not met her. After meeting her in person for the first time, he is repulsed by her personality and appearance - a more physical side of her. He describes her in unflattering terms: “a small, unlovely woman in glasses, with a figure like a sack of straw,” “she had an unpleasantly loud, gloomy voice, with a sort of sob embedded in it.”

Early on in the novel, she comes across as glum, hostile, insecure in her own skin, and generally angry and depressed; a sullen misfit who does not inspire much liking. She compares her computer to herself: “old and cranky and incompatible with almost anything.” She expresses the crux of her existence in lacking a sense of self: “I don’t seem to be like other people. I don’t know what I’m like. That’s the trouble with being adopted and not knowing your real parents.”

It is in the heterotopia where the PhantasmaCon is, however, that we see the other sides of her, and those of other characters more clearly. Notably, the PhantasmaCon attracts many eccentric people, but also brings out the stranger and more whimsical sides in others. This supports the heterotopia of the PhantasmaCon as a mindscape, as characters there seem to act differently from their usual selves and contrary to social norms, as if reflecting their inner selves.

Unlike her typically misanthropic self, Maree is curious, interested and empathetic to many of the PhantasmaCon’s attendees, whom she doesn’t even know well. She particularly notices those who look as if they may not fit in very well or get much attention in the so-called real world. Maree, who often feels like an outsider, has some fellow-feeling for them.

I know what really struck me: the hall was full of people I’d like to get to know. An unusual feeling for sulky, solitary me. This feeling extended particularly to the large sprinkling of shy-looking middle-aged ladies (much to my surprise).

She speculates about the inner life and personality of one woman as if venturing into her inner world.

I found myself … thinking that whatever she did for a job, it bored her, and she didn’t get on with her workmates, so she clearly lived a passionate life among books instead. And I would have liked to talk to her about some of the things we’d both read.

But even among a gathering of relative outsiders (at least in the “real” world), Maree is an outsider here too, and is left on her own the rest of her first evening there. In a symbolic moment, Maree sees her reflection in the hotel’s many mirrors: “All I saw were multiple versions of myself, looking small and lost.”

As time goes on at the PhantasmaCon, a more appealing aspect of Maree - positive, empathetic and contemplative - comes out, as if her inner self is more attractive to others. Rupert is surprised to enjoy Maree’s company here, in contrast to their unpleasant encounter in Bristol.

Strengthening the metaphor of multiple selves is the use of the Hotel Babylon as a gateway to other worlds. It is via the Hotel Babylon that Rupert, Nick and Maree magically travel to the world of Thule and visit the former’s brother Will, another Magid. Unexpectedly, Maree finds herself contented and relaxing in a way she hadn’t for years there. She also gets along well with Will, impressing him with her veterinary training and presumably her magical potential, as she has managed to travel to his world without incurring injuries; travelling between worlds without proper magical training and safeguards (which Maree and Nick did) can be highly dangerous to the traveller’s life. They get along to the extent that, against the rules, Will tells her about Magids and what they do. It is this brief trip to Thule that gives her the determination to travel to other worlds and likely her ambition to become a Magid. That she is happy and comfortable with two Magids there is a sign that she is with her own people, so to speak. In this light, Thule can represent Maree’s exploration of her more magical and intellectual side.

It is the concept of stripping, however, that most starkly illustrates the split self in Deep Secret.

The notion of the adolescent’s split Self is magnificently portrayed in Deep Secret. In passing between worlds, there is a danger of being “Stripped,” divided between worlds … Nick’s witch mother “strips” Maree to get rid of her. In order to become whole again, Maree has to go through a ritual … It is tempting to interpret Nick, Rob and Maree’s trip to the mysterious Babylon beyond space and time in terms of Jungian quest for Self … Babylon seems to be the only place where the split Self can be united, as well as the only place where the many worlds are brought together - at least in the protagonist’s wishful thinking.”

Maree’s stripping renders her weak and half-dead, “a virtual corpse.” Although she is still technically alive, she doesn’t have much time left, as the stripped part of a person fades very quickly. Maree’s split self through stripping strongly reinforces the idea of various selves in disharmony, to the extent that one’s identity is vulnerable to fracturing.4 To help Maree become whole, Rupert conducts a magical ritual, the titular deep secret. This opens a portal to a place outside time and space called Babylon, where Maree must go and ask for the rest of her to be restored, while accompanied by Nick and Rob.

When Maree returns, she is not only restored to health, but the various parts of herself seem to be in harmony. Rupert observes:

She was the old Maree in every way. She was the right colour again … With all this, she was a whole new Maree … It was as if she had not been filling her proper outlines before this. Now she did … She looked astonishingly good … A look I had not seen before - one of pure delight - filled her face. I don’t think she had ever been truly happy in her life before. Now she was, because she had seen me.

Crucially, it is after her journey to Babylon and her restoration that Rupert recommends her for the position of Magid. Presumably her journey there has helped her to achieve her potential and qualify. Perhaps that is the ultimate fantasy in Deep Secret: that despite your flaws, a higher authority has seen your great potential, and someone linked to that authority actively enables you to achieve that potential.

These are the books I bought and received as gifts in 2024. Obviously I haven’t read all of them, but I feel that sharing only the books you’ve read is an incomplete picture. What I want to do is to share my interests and what I've been exploring, and I’d love to hear the same from you.

Books I bought in 2024:

1. Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom edited by Teya Rosenberg

2. Blair by Anthony Seldon

3. The End of the Party by Andrew Rawnsley

4. Left Out by Gabriel Pogrund

5. Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries by Marilyn Butler

6. Haven't You Heard? by Marie Le Conte

7. Fall Out by Tim Shipman

8. Paper Boat by Margaret Atwood

9. Dearly by Margaret Atwood (I didn’t know this when I bought Dearly, if you’re buying Paper Boat, it contains the poems from Dearly so you don’t need to buy Dearly as well)

10. Servants of the People by Andrew Rawnsley

11. The Sleepwalkers by Richard J Evans

12. Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

13. The Romantic Revolution by Tim Blanning

14. The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

15. Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm

16. Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History by Richard J Evans

17. The Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm

18. Constable: A Portrait by James Hamilton

19. Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

20. The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier

21. Lucky by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes

22. When the Clock Broke by John Ganz

23. Strange Rites by Tara Isabella Burton

24. Reflections by Diana Wynne Jones

25. Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones

26. A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge

27. Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge

28. The Unfinished Revolution by Philip Gould

29. Mistletoe and Murder by Robin Stevens

30. Sanditon by Jane Austen

31. Lady Susan and the Watsons by Jane Austen

32. In Search of Anne Bronte by Nick Holland

33. Authentocrats by Joe Kennedy

34. The Anatomy of Poetry by Marjorie Boulton

35. The Anatomy of the Novel by Marjorie Boulton

36. Scott and Society by Graham McMaster

37. Bernard Shaw by Michael Holroyd

38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (the Penguin Clothbound Classics edition with an introduction by Maurice Hindle)

39. How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark

40. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

41. The Future of the Self by Joanna Nadin

42. Poems by Diana Wynne Jones

43. The Divided Self by RD Laing

44. The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Zizek

45. The Political Unconscious by Fredric Jameson

46. Elite Capture by Olufemi Taiwo

47. The Theory of the Avant-Garde by Renato Poggioli

48. The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

49. Neuromancer by William Gibson

50. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

51. The Oresteia by Aeschylus

52. The Romantic School by Heinrich Heine

53. An Experiment in Criticism by CS Lewis

54. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas by Marilyn Butler

55. The Anatomy of Prose by Marjorie Boulton

56. The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han

57. The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

58. Hannah Arendt: Life Is a Narrative (Alexander Lectures) by Julia Kristeva

59. The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt

60. The Sociology of Philosophies by Randall Collins

61. Charisma by Randall Collins

62. The Crisis of the European Mind by Paul Hazard

63. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

Books I was given in 2024:

1. A Hunger Artist and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

3. An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

4. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

5. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

6. Gertrude by Hermann Hesse

7. Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

8. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

9. Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus

10. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers

(Shoutout to for the birthday gift!)

Books I read but did not buy:

1. Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones

2. Drowned Ammet by Diana Wynne Jones

3. The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones

4. The Crown of Dalemark by Diana Wynne Jones

5. Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6. Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

What have you been reading, buying, borrowing and just looking at in 2024? Share your thoughts in the replies!

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