Our story centers around Sophie, the oldest of three daughters. Her sisters are the beautiful, clever and headstrong Lettie and the happy and spirited Martha. Sophie feels that as the oldest it will never fall to her to seek her fortune, but instead to stay at home and run her father's hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping (A Victorian era type town). Sophie is the main decorator of these hats and any hat she touches tends to take on a life of it's own, for example to a certain hat, she told it that it had a heart of gold and somebody in a high position would marry it. Sure enough, a homely girl with no prospects bought the hat and ran of with a count the very next week! Sophie's sisters have been apprenticed out, Martha was sent to Mrs.Fairfax to learn magic, and Lettie was sent to the bakery to be a shop girl. Sophie decides to visit Lettie at the bakery and discover that the girls have switched places as it better suites their temperaments and likes. On her way to and from the bakery Sophie has discovered that she has become very fearful of the faster
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pace of life outside her shop. Back in the hat shop Sophie is on her own when the notorious Witch of the Waste comes in and places a spell on her, turning her into an old woman. Deciding she has nothing to loose, she sets out to seek her fortune. On the way she stumbles upon an upside down scarecrow, whom she sets back to rights and a poor dog tied to a stick stuck in the bushes. Sophie untangles the dog and takes the stick for herself to use as a sort of walking stick. Sophie ends up stumbling upon a patchwork castle that is slowly moving around the countryside. This is Howl's castle, the dwelling of a well known dandy of a powerful wizard who is rumored to lure young girls to his castle and then eat their hearts. Sophie is not to worried as she is now an old lady and just wants a warm chair by the fire. Sophie gets into the castle and finds a chair, but the fire turns out to be a demon named Calcifer who wants her to break the contract between it and Howl, in return he will break her spell. Sophie agrees but cannot get any more information about what the contract is or how to break it. Howl's apprentice finds Sophie and decides to let her stay the night. Sophie determined to stay in the castle becomes the cleaning lady. Howl lets her stay and proves himself to be a most vain and impulsive, yet not unkind young man. The majority of his time is spent either in the bathroom using various potions and powders to make himself attractive, or wooing young ladies and then loosing interest as soon as they fall for him. Howl and Sophie have a bit of a love/hate relationship, the kind you have with somebody who you absolutely adore, but can irritate the heck out of you at any given moment. The castle door is very unique in that depending on which of the four colors you turn a knob, the
door will open to one of four places, including Wales where Howl is originally from. The fouresome (Howl, Sophie, Michael and Calcifer) have a couple of adventures and mishaps, mostley with Sophie at the middle of them. Eventually it comes out that Howl has been cursed by the Witch of the Waste and when it comes true he will be compelled to go back to her. Also along side all of this the Kings wizard is missing, along with the kings brother Prince Justin. The King wants Howl to become his new wizard and to find his brother, but Howl wants no part of it, so he changes his castle to open to new places, including the old hat shop where Sophie used to work, but now the group decides to sell flowers. Eventually the Witch of the Waste catches up with Howl, and Sophie who discovers she has magic of her own, goes to try and save Howl. Eventually the witch is defeated, but turns out she is not the big baddie. The Witch had given her heart to a fire demon who was not as nice as Calcifer, and it was trying to take over Howl. Sophie finially realizes what the contract between Calcifer and Howl is. When Howl was younger he caught a falling star that was dying, instead of letting it go, he offered the dying star his heart in exchange for power. Sophie retrieves Howl's heart from Calcifer and together they defeat the old fire demon. Calcifer decides to stay and Sophie realizes her curse is broken. Howl informs her that he knew she was cursed all along, but no matter how hard he tried he could not break it. Turns out Sophie was hanging on to her guise as an old lady as a way to do what she wanted without having to worry about propriety or anything like that. Once she no longer needed that disguise, the curse went away on it's own accord. Howl and Sophie kiss and decide that they are about the only two who can stand each other for long periods of time and live adventurously ever after.
This summary can hardly do this book justice. There are so many other characters and sub-plots and places that...well just go read the book already. This book shows the gamut of human emotions, greed, vanity, kindness, charity, perseverance fear, and love. Love is it's own very special thing in this book because the author shows the full extent of all the different kinds of love out there. So many times a book get's stuck on "true love" of the romantic variety and forgets all of the other wonderful ways to love that are out there. There is family love, shown by Howl's love for his sister and her kids, even though she does not approve of what he does, and Sophie and her sisters, never once are they enemies, but united in love...even Martha who is only a half-sister. There is love of friends, as when Howl takes in Michael and trains him and watches out for his best interest, or between Calcifer and Howl even if it seems lopsided on occasion, they are constantly watching each others backs. There is parent/child love as seen when the King is willing to do anything to protect his young daughter (who he keeps with him at all times, even in the council chamber) or when Fanny, who is the step-mother to Sophie and Lettie and mother to Martha does her best to try and make life as
good as she can for all three girls, not just her own daughter. And yes their is romantic love as well, we see the silly love of Howl chasing after girls, until it is no longer fun, we see Michael doing everything he can to win Lettie's love, and we see the exasperating, irritating, comfortable, actually knowing somebody and loving them anyways flaws and all love that takes the whole book to develop between Sophie and Howl. The author knows how to write humans, she knows how to make their emotions, actions and reactions genuine and believable all while setting it in this fantastic world of endless possibilities With a flick of the knob, a change of color and you can potentially be anywhere in the universe. All this does not even begin to describe the wonderful sense of humor that pervades the whole story. It would be easy for a story like this to get very dark, but all of the characters keep a sense of perspective to it all that keeps the book very fresh and enjoyable, Sophie especially has some great lines as her old lady self. There is a Miyazaki animated film version of this book that is story wise pretty different, but tone and style wise absolutely magnificent, I would highly recommend it. I give this book a 10 out of 10 jewel encrusted tiaras, it is excellent and everybody should read it.
If you could have a door that led to four places, where would those places be? Are my extreme ramblings ever making any sense whatsoever? How many different worlds are out there do you think?
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