The Lives of Christopher Chant
by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, 2000 (1988).
This Diana Wynne Jones book has an intriguing title: we are used to The Lives of the Caesars (where more than one person is involved) or, on the other extreme, The Life of Brian (which is about just one person).
The Lives of Christopher Chant, on the other hand, reflects the notion that one person can have, like a cat, more than one life. This notion is an old one, from the transmigration of the soul to the Russian folk-villain Koshchei, whose external soul is hidden away in one object enclosed within another, and so on; most recently the concept has become familiar from the Horcruxes within which Harry Potter’s nemesis hides pieces of his soul, but before you surmise that Jones copied Voldemort’s strategy it’s worth pointing out that The Lives of Christopher Chant predates Rowling’s series.
Christopher Chant’s ownership of nine lives makes him something special in the world into which he is born, but it is a destiny which he is reluctant to inherit.
Continue reading “Intimations of mortality”
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