"Tam Lin" is an ancient Scottish legend, told in the form of song and preserved by 19th-century anthologist Francis James Child as one of his "Child Ballads." It is one of the best-known and best-loved of all the Ballads. Over the years, numerous respected folksingers have recorded their own versions of it, including Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny, and, most recently, Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer (the last is my favorite). "Tam Lin" also holds a special place in the hearts of fantasy fiction fans: Diana Wynne Jones, Patricia McKillip, and Alan Garner are just a few of the esteemed genre writers who have penned novels based on the legend.When asked why they are so fascinated by the legend of "Tam Lin," most people claim it is the fact that the legend, in a rather proto-feminist way, revolves around the deeds of a female hero: a young woman named Janet who goes to battle against the Queen of Fairyland to save the soul of a man named Tam Lin whom the Queen has kidnapped and enthralled. But I think there is more to people's collective fascination with "Tam Lin" than they are owning up to. You see, the legend has a darker side to it; it contains elements that one might argue are rather difficult to reconcile with feminist ideology. In most versions of the song, Janet first meets Tam Lin when, for no good reason, she decides to go flower-picking in a forest that she has been warned to stay away from, under threat of robbery or rape. Janet defies this warning and goes to the forest anyway: not only does she go there, but, upon hearing the warning, she runs there "as fast as she can go" (!). When Tam Lin finds her there, he takes her virginity. The consensual nature of the act is dubious; one cannot help hearing resonances with the Greek myth in which Hades ravishes Persephone. What is clear about Tam Lin's and Janet's sexual encounter is that it takes place with a bizarre suddenness, before Janet even has a chance to ascertain whether Tam Lin is a human being or some kind of forest sprite. Tam Lin vanishes immediately afterward, only to reappear months later when Janet's pregnancy is beginning to show and she has returned to the forest to harvest abortifacient herbs. Only then does he tell her his sob story about being kidnapped by the Queen of Fairyland and enlist her help in securing his freedom.Most novelists who retell the "Tam Lin" legend conveniently leave these early scenes out (although they may hint at them in subtle, non-overt ways; in Fire and Hemlock, a novel that departs from the original legend in manifold ways, beginning by recasting Janet as a solitary 10-year-old girl, there is an overarching sense of menace, with pedophilic/hebophilic appetites being ascribed to various minor characters -- and loss of innocence, broadly speaking, is a major theme).Now, I understand that these novelists are well within their rights to omit whatever story elements they choose: different parts of the legend speak more loudly to different people. When I first discovered the legend of "Tam Lin" as a much younger woman than I am now, I was in the process of ending an asymmetric romantic entanglement that I had found myself in, and what appealed to me most about the legend was the fact that it heroized a woman for being (literally) a clingy girlfriend. It made me feel vindicated. Diana Wynne Jones, being more lofty-minded than myself, prefers to focus on other aspects of the legend, such as its representation of the "heroic ideal." Well, fortunately, there is room in the legend for us all.Wynne Jones is formidably well-read: the source material on which Fire and Hemlock is based not only includes the Child Ballads "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer," but also includes Homer's Odyssey, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Frazer's The Golden Bough, and dozens of other literary texts, encompassing the lofty, fat, and obscure. These literary forefathers figure into Fire and Hemlock in profound but pleasingly unobtrusive ways, leaving you with what seems on the surface to be nothing more than an unputdownable yarn. I read the whole book in a single sitting. The only part I really had a quibble with was the murky ending: after so much build-up, a novelist owes it to her readers to at least let them know what happened!!
(Pre-1985-) Dianna Wynne Jones is my absolute favorite writer of all time. Since I've gotten this far with cataloguing much of my reading history, I had to make sure this fact is recorded here somewhere. I actually haven't read this one -- my favorite -- in years, mostly because I'm terrified I'll discover it can no longer do for me anything like what it did when I was a kid.I really wish I could read anything now that would give me the kind of experience I had as a child reading Ms. Jones's books. Somewhere she has an essay or an interview where she talks about the difference between writing for kids and writing for adults. What she says is that you don't have to explain every little thing to kids the way you do to grownups, because they just intuitively understand the unwritten logic of the world you're describing, which I really think is true. It's because she exploits this that her books are so amazing: they hook into some kind of childhood mental processes and content, so that much of the story doesn't need to be written, and is actually being told in collaboration with the wee, developing mind on a much more vivid and intensely personal level than would be possible just from reading a regular book, if that makes any sense... I guess as you get older, all that fluid, multicolored, unlimited swirly stuff in the immature brain dries up, and whatever's left gets dammed and filtered into these confining narrow, crusty little channels. I can't engage with fiction at all the way I did when I was a kid, which is the chief reason why I don't read much anymore, now that I'm grown. Now I sit there and think, "Here I am, reading this book," or "This book is well-written," or "that doesn't seem plausible." How deeply unsatisfying is *that*?Dianna Wynne Jones's best books follow one brilliant pattern, which I'm not really going to get into here except to say that the endings are always the same: huge, chaotic, messy implosions in which the characters, time, space, and a thousand different worlds all reach some frenetic pitch and then collapse in on themselves with a hugely satisfying crash. Hooray! When I was younger, my dream was to travel to England in an effort to meet Dianna Wynne Jones. I sort of let go of that dream, though, when I realized I couldn't think of anything to say. Maybe now I could tell her: "Oh, screw Harry Potter!" And then I could thank her.Thank you, Ms. Jones!
What do You think about Fire And Hemlock (2002)?
I started reading this last night when I needed something to help me fall asleep. At 4:30 a.m., I finished it. Today, my brain is dead because I stayed up all last night reading this amazing, awesome book and so now I have no substantive review because I am braindead. But it was worth it! So worth it! Really, an excellent book. Also, this may be my very favorite explicit engagement with a myth in ya. Basically, what I'm saying is, if you follow me because you think you share some taste in genre fiction, and you haven't read this book already, do yourself a favor and get your hands on it. Also? The aging in this book is unlike anything I have ever read before and his brilliant.
—Sam Grace
Diana Wynne Jones is my absolute favourite children's author, and this is my absolute favourite of her books. However, the first time I read this, probably at around age nine or ten, I was monumentally confused by everything about the plot, though everything else about the book was good enough to make up for it. At the time I thought I'd re-read it again when I was older and I'd understand it better because I would be smarter, but I kept re-reading it periodically and I still didn't get it. After a while I got sick of all this re-reading and still not understanding so I made a conscious decision for this book to not be my favourite any more and I didn't read it for a few years.But then when I re-read it just recently, things were much clearer! Not entirely clear, but I have hope for the future. I still love this book. I am pathologically unable to not love this book.
—C.
Explores in a very meta way the mythical trope of hero figures through the interactions of a young girl Polly and a man called Thomas Lynn whom she befriends at a funeral being held at the mysterious neighbouring manor house one Halloween. References to Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer and T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets abound and a familiarity with these should enlighten an understanding of the plot, particularly the ending which is famed for its confusing and oblique denouement, but is not essential to enjoying the mysterious magic surrounding Tom and Polly's adventures together. For me, this book epitomises the lone overarching problem I have with Wynne Jones' writing and that is the fast pacing of her conclusions; a fault made obvious by the furious application of obscure (for my illiterate brain) and dense allusion in the final chapters of Fire and Hemlock. The speed with which she ties up loose story lines after the climax and her realignment of her characters' lives after these events often occur in a way that leaves me unsatisfied with what feels like a slightly incomplete novel. Having said that, Fire and Hemlock for me has enough to outweigh this flaw in the brilliance of Jones' writing - the complexity of Polly's maturation occurring concurrently with an equally complex quest, the affection she makes you feel for these characters through Jones' wit and acutely drawn familiarity, and that flair she has for writing magical situations within completely mundane settings which radiate clearly in your imagination with surreal wonder and believability. These are common effects of Jones' writing that culminated in a best ever showing here in this book.
—Astrid
