(no subject)

This may be some kind of fantasy literature geek heresy, but I just cannot get into Diana Wynne Jones. I'm on my third book of hers, and all of them I've ended up wanting to smack the non-viewpoint characters for being deliberately obtuse and creating 9/10ths of the plot problems by not talking. I've now read Howl's Moving Castle and both Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant from The Chronicles of Chrestomanci. And there comes a point in each book where I'm wanting to throw things at the non-viewpoint characters for sitting there, watching the viewpoint character muddle around because s/he doesn't know what's going on, and then getting mad at them for it.

I know some of the people on my flist are fans of hers. Tell me, do all of the books have this plot concept? Or did I just run into a bad batch?