Gah!!I almost never give 1 star to books I've actually finished, because they're bound to have some redeeming quality that will at least bring the rating up to 2. But the best I can say about this one is that it's not offensive--in fact, I share many of the author's opinions--and that the prose was at least competent enough for me to continue reading, but that isn't very redeeming when it so utterly failed to entertain that I threw it against a wall. (I really did!)The (alleged!) premise of this book is that it's a retelling of the fairy tale/ballad of the same name, set in the early 1970's in a small Minnesota liberal arts college. I say "alleged" because the fantasy element is only occasionally hinted at until the last 50 pages or so out of 456. The rest is "Daily Life of an English Major." (On reflection I've decided to not even put it on my "fantasy" shelf; it hasn't earned that.) In fact, over 300 pages describe the protagonist's freshman year, even though the events of the ballad don't happen until she's a senior. And, seriously, nothing happens.But don't just take my word for it. Here's a representative sample:"She put the books she was holding neatly on her lower shelf, shrugged out of her pink nylon jacket and hung it over the back of her desk chair, tucked her gray Blackstock T-shirt into her pink corduroy pants, put the jacket back on, zipped it to just below the Blackstock seal on the T-shirt so that the lion seemed to be peering over the zipper pull, and said, 'Let's go, before the line gets too long.'"And the whole book is like that! Endless minutiae (and bizarre fashion choices), with every little thing described in detail no matter how irrelevant it is. Now, I have nothing against slow pacing; the right author can write a brilliant book consisting almost entirely of minutiae. Read The Remains of the Day if you don't believe me. But the difference between that book and this one is that here, the minutiae doesn't mean anything; there's no payoff; it doesn't advance the plot or illuminate the characters or their relationships. It's just endless daily life, the stuff that's moderately interesting to live through but gets boring when even your friends talk about it too long--and how much worse, then, when the people living it are fictional characters?In Tam Lin, we sit through every meeting Janet has with her academic advisor to pick her classes. The merits of various professors and their teaching styles and syllabi are discussed. Every time Janet and her friends want food, we see them weigh which dining hall to eat in (the one with a view of the lake? or the one resembles a dungeon? did I mention that the architecture of generically-named buildings I could never remember is also much discussed?). And of course, there's the books. Endless discussions of literature--by which I mean, for the most part, old-school poetry and plays--seem to substitute in the author's mind for both plot and character development.In fact, there's so little tension in this book that halfway through, Janet realizes the biggest problem in her life is that one of her roommates, while a perfectly nice girl, doesn't understand Janet's literary obsession. And that Janet therefore finds her tedious. What the....?! Did the author miss the creative writing class where they talked about how a plot requires conflict??SPOILERAnd then we get to the end, and the retelling bit plays out exactly like the ballad, and exactly as Janet was told it would. And then the (alleged!) villain responds with a disapproving stare and exits stage left. I say "alleged" because the most detailed description we ever get of her supposed acts of villainy is basically, "Well, there's a rumor she's slept with a married person sometime." How truly menacing!/SPOILERI could keep going.... the indistinct personalities, the mysteries and foreshadowing that are heavily built up and then come to nothing, the use of unexplained, apparently magically-induced memory loss and general indifference to keep Janet from figuring out the entire (alleged!) plot early on, the dialogue that's probably 50% literary quotes, the 12 pages describing a play blow-by-blow, which even then fail to explain it so that it makes sense!.... but in the spirit of what I think Dean was trying to do with this book, I am going to recommend some other books instead.So: if you want to read about college women in the early 1970s, try Nunez's The Last of Her Kind. If you want cultlike groups of Classics majors at small-town liberal arts colleges, read Tartt's The Secret History. If you like the idea of pretentious college students combined with fantasy elements, try Grossman's The Magicians. Or, for less pretention and more coming-of-age, Walton's Among Others (okay, I had mixed feelings about that one, but at least it has some plot and character development to go with its science fiction references). And if you're here because you want a fairy tale retelling where the girl saves the guy from an evil sorceress, check out something by Juliet Marillier, preferably Daughter of the Forest.But if you really do want to read a book that describes liberal-arts-college life in exhaustive detail and talks endlessly about the sorts of works only an English major could love? Then by all means, read Tam Lin. You can have my copy!
I have thoughts. They will be written at some point. I was in my mid 30s when I finally watched The Breakfast Club. I rally enjoyed it but I'm glad I didn't watch it when I was at high school; school was already something of a disappointment. I read Tam Lin for the first time this year, 15 years after finishing my undergrad studies - yes, with a BA. I am really glad that I didn't read this before or during my studies. I thoroughly enjoyed university, but there was very little spontaneous Shakespeare and Milton and Keats quoting going on. I've heard about this on and off over the years; Tansy is a huge fan. I didn't really have any idea of what to expect - I don't know the ballad on which it is based, and although I knew there was some Fae element I think I was expecting a kind of Tom's Midnight Garden experience, going in and out of fairyland? Or something. So it wasn't what I expected, but mostly in a good way.Spoilers are hidden, if you're like me and not up on your faery-tinged-undergrad-learning love story! (That is, it's a love story to undergrad learning. Although there are love stories in the novel as well.)Like I said, I was expecting the fairy stuff a lot earlier than it actually turned up. To the point where I got to wondering that because the university experience was so exquisite, was that actually the fairy land? And Janet would eventually wake up? Or something? It was amusing to note the similarities in Janet's experience of college and my own, as well as the differences, some of which are temporal (25 years different), many I suspect are geographical (US expectations of a 'liberal arts degree' are very different from Australian ones... doing physical education? As a compulsory unit??... plus I will never, ever understand the necessity of rooming at college - and I lived in residence for two years), and most of them are of course fiction v reality. With the hindsight of my mid-30s, I enjoyed this fantastical take on college, while acknowledging just how unreal it was. I really liked the discussions Janet and co had around poetry and theatre and what to major in - those discussions can be, and sometimes were, glorious - as well as the fact that Dean includes in-class stuff, with good lecturers and bad. It did make me a little sentimental for my own experience, which I am definitely seeing with a rosy tinge these days. I was also interested in the fact that, published in 1991, it was set 20 years prior. By the end this decision made sense - (view spoiler)[the stuff about pregnancy and being on the pill would presumably have been a much more raw and radical issue in the early 70s, socially speaking, than in the 90s. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Tam Lin (2006)?
Sing it, Sandy.So, for those of you not in the know, Tam Lin is a Scottish ballad about the liberation of Tam Lin from his love and capture, the Queen of the Fairies. Oh, those pesky fairies again. Always getting involved in shit they shouldn't.Pamela Dean writes a contemporary version of that story. Reading it is kind of exhausting.Janet is a freshman at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. Hey, I went to one of those too! Except I attended one in Missouri instead of Minnesota. There are a lot of similarities - the description of the campus, descriptions of campus life (says the woman who never actually lived on campus, but hung around enough to get an idea), and so much more. Our campus had a ghost story too.But reading this book was sort of like being in school again. The first 300-some pages are about Janet's first year, while the rest of the book rushes by in the few remaining pages. This is sort of sloppy writing, but at the same time, isn't that sort of how college went for a bunch of us? It's like that first year took for.ever and then it was the second year and we were pros, and it all just flew by like that. Okay, maybe not.There's a lot of talk about courses and majors and professors and little inside jokes about each. Again, not unlike college life. Except when you're living it, you're also going for a refreshing drink or taking a nap, and while you're reading this book it's just being hammered and hammered into your brain. Where was the fantasy? Where were the fucking fairies? I waited a really long time.And so will you! The real magic doesn't happen until very late into the story, and you'll probably wonder if you missed it. It's there, so hang in there, but you'll probably want to throw in the towel way before you find it. Before you get there, you will know more about these undeveloped, 2D characters and their problems more than your own, and you will be so tired of hearing about birth control and sex and the Classics. It's a clunky story and so very little happens in such a large amount of space; honestly, I can't believe I read it all.This is a 1-star read for me, except I'm feeling gracious and I can't say the book is entirely without merit. I thought of my own college days and wish I had done some of them differently, but then I'm also reminded of how insanely expensive it was, the 2-3 jobs I held in order to pay for it, the drama between friends that erupted occasionally, the politics of the college under a disgusting pig of a president. The college years are often sort of shallow, but I met my best friend there and we're still besties, and that says something. Because I get sick of people pretty easily (and they get sick of me too). So this book reminded me of some of that good stuff too.I'm so glad to be done. Hanging in there was much like hanging in there when I went to school. For a long while I couldn't even imagine the end, and then all of a sudden the end was there. Voila.Our ghost story was better.
—El
Mixed feelings, once again! On the plus side, I absolutely could not put this book down. Dean makes the setting—a midwestern liberal arts college in the early '70s—come alive so completely that even when the biggest issue at stake is what classes Janet, our heroine, is going to take, I was utterly entranced. In fact, the straightforward college narrative is so convincing and so good that I would have been perfectly happy for the book to be about nothing but that. Which is not to say that I didn't like the undercurrent of weird supernatural goings-on—on the contrary, I LOVE that kind of thing. I love hints that something's not quite right, of something "off" just beneath the surface. I love that at the beginning of a story—but I must put the emphasis there on the beginning. In a 460 page novel, I think it's a problem if said undercurrents stay nothing but undercurrents until page 425. The revelation ends up feeling rushed; the mystical climax oddly tacked on. It got to the point where I kind of wanted Janet's rescue of her Tam Lin stand-in to remain metaphorical, not magical—an atypical response for me. Especially when all the characters seem so blasé about what's just happened. I was like, "Hello! You only had about 20 pages to get used to this! How are you back to discussing Pope already?"That said, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book because I did enjoy the build-up so much, and because Janet is such a wonderful character. Also: it's a book where the hero's an English major! That, alone, makes me extraordinarily happy.
—Trin
This is a book I wish I could have liked. And yet don't feel bad at all about loathing. I think that describing one of the male protagonists as madly attractive and then spending much of the book having to imagine him (unironically) with billowing, ruffled front silk blouses was beyond my capabilities to suspend disbelief. Madly attractive and billowing silk blouses on an early 1970's college campus doesn't work for me. Especially with the mad quoting of great literature. Jennifer Crusie quoting from movies made Welcome to Temptation hard for me to get into - this book was in many ways pure torture. And to my less than admiring eyes, the quoting took on a sense of intellectual masturbation which sadly (for it left me quite unmoved) was the most well developed and romantic part of what in many ways was a book about three couples' romantic relationship - all of which left me cold. I can understand why many like the book; ultimately I think this book and I were just not a good fit for one another. And can I add just one more yuck for the billowing silk blouses? Oh, and a belated yuck for the longish hair and roguish beards that I also could. not. appreciate. at. all. Superficial, I am sure. So, for the most part - you should probably disregard this review if the blurb about the book makes it sound at all interesting to you.
—Sasha
