The Lives of Christopher Chant was published by Methuen in 1988. The novel is a prequel to Charmed Life, telling the story of Christopher Chant’s childhood — how he discovered his ability to visit other worlds, how he lost eight of his nine lives, and how he eventually became the Chrestomanci.
Young Christopher lives in a grand but loveless Victorian household: his parents are estranged, his mother is socially ambitious, and his father is distant. At night, Christopher dreams himself into other worlds — the “Related Worlds” of the multiverse — and brings things back. His uncle Ralph discovers this ability and begins using Christopher to smuggle magical contraband between worlds, a fact Christopher doesn’t understand until the smuggling operation begins to endanger his lives.
The novel explores the Chrestomanci concept from the inside: what does it feel like to have nine lives? Jones’s answer is that it feels like invulnerability — until you start losing them, at which point it feels like mortality approaching with terrible speed. Christopher loses lives through drowning, fire, snakebite, and other hazards, each loss marking a stage in his loss of innocence about the people who are supposed to protect him.
Jones is particularly good on the emotional isolation of a child whose extraordinary abilities make him useful to adults but not loved by them. Christopher’s eventual rebellion — his refusal to continue being exploited — is both a personal coming-of-age and a political awakening. The novel deepens the reader’s understanding of the elegant, apparently effortless Chrestomanci of Charmed Life by showing the difficult education that produced him.
Collecting The Lives of Christopher Chant
First edition (Methuen, London, 1988): Hardcover, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $80–$200
- Very good/very good: $30–$80