I love Charmain so much— she's probably my favorite of Jones' characters, not least because she does kind of feel kind of like a cross between Howl and Sophie with a crabby, lonely bookworminess all her own. Her coping mechanism for everything is "well, that's a problem for Tomorrow Me and/or Somebody Else to deal with, I'm going to read a book" and I felt that in my soul.

(Part of me still isn't over the fact I didn't discover Diana Wynne Jones' books as a kid, but the other part of me is glad, because I don't know if I'd have loved Charmain and Fire and Hemlock's Polly as much as I do now - with a sort of fierce protective love that comes from seeing so much of my younger self in them - or if I'd have bounced off of them for, well, the same reason.)