Tam Lin by Pamela Dean Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tam Lin
Book Review: Alright, I'll admit it....
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first found this book a few years back, I was sceptical. I had grown up on the old Fairport Convention version of the ballad, and had found a book or two based on it. However, when I found this, it sounded... not so great. I mean, setting the old scottish fairy tail in a midwest college in the 70's? Really? WHY? What good could that be? It had to be aweful if it differed that much from the storyline, right?
Wrong. By the time that my best friend gave this to me as a christmas gift, I had forgotten that this book existed. So I started reading it. And couldn't stop. The characters remind me a lot of the people at my college. I know people who speak just like Nick and Jannet, however odd that may seem. I found the plot to be stunning, and more than once found myself skipping back to parts as bits and pieces were revieled, realizing how this or that fits in. Whay can I say? I'm stunned.
Also, look closely at the cover. It's fun to analyze.
Book Review: Clever and indulgent as a fantasy of manners, but unsatisfying as a fairy tale retelling. Moderately recommended
Summary: 4 Stars
In the 1970s, Janet begins at Midwest liberal arts Blackstock College, and so enters a world of unusual students, burgeoning love, intense academia, and perhaps even fairies. Tam Lin, intended to be a retelling of the Scottish ballad of the same name, is both a surprising success and a regretful disappointment--in both cases, perhaps attributable to its particular style of fairy tale retelling. Of its 450 pages, only the last 50 reenact the source material; the rest of the book is given over to Blackstock college and its students. In this way, Tam Lin is largely a fantasy of manners: an academic dreamland where the classes are inspiring, the students brilliant, and literary quotation peppers dialog and replaces graffiti; the cast is composed of a colorful handful of students, navigating the complexities of romantic entanglement and the rigors of education. It's so complex and clever to be self-indulgent leaning towards twee: this is the college education that romantic academics wish to have, and it's hardly convincing as the real thing. Yet it's such beautiful wish fulfillment that it's a joy to read--a joy compromised by the fact that, despite its brilliance and complexity, there's little here which is real enough to latch on to, but a joy nonetheless.
Peppered as it is by anachronisms and ghosts, constantly hinting at some fantasy on the edge of reality, the bulk of Tam Lin is also a convincing setup for the fairy tale to come--yet for those first 400 pages, Dean shies away from explicit fantasy. Creating and then denying expectation emphasizes the enjoyable nuance of the fantasy of manners, provides a solid base to support believable fantasy, and keeps anticipation high, and when that fantasy finally arrives it is welcome and initially convicing--but the fairy tale comes so quick and to the letter, filling the last 50 pages with a brief and near-literal reenactment of the original ballad, ending abruptly upon the ballad's completion, that it doesn't fulfill the expectations raised by all that anticipation. Perhaps Tam Lin ought not be a retelling of Tam Lin. It's clever and indulgent, if ultimately unsubstantial, as a fantasy of manners, and it's ready to blossom into rich explicit fantasy, but as a retelling of Tam Lin it is sudden and insufficient--the retelling is merely an ending which, while not out of place, is largely tacked on. It begs better integration and resolution, and the same care and detail given to the rest of the book. As it is, "Tam Lin" may be on the cover but there's just not enough of it in the book, and so Pamela Dean's Tam Lin is gorgeous, intelligent, indulgent, but leaves something to be desired. I recommend it, but I wish that I could do so without reservation: there's so much here to enjoy, and I certainly did, but the book's successes also serve to make its failures more visible and regrettable by comparison.
Book Review: I always knew college was magical
Summary: 5 Stars
This book sat on my TBR bookcase for far too long, in part because the Thomas Canty cover strongly suggested a "Fairyland" setting (aided and abetted by the book's being part of the "The Fairy Tale Series," edited by Terri Windling), of which I had read far too much recently, much of it YA. When I finally did pick it up, I was utterly lost. While TAM LIN is indeed a retelling of the old ballad and does indeed feature young adult characters, the heart of the story is the insular world of a small liberal arts college very much like the one I attended. From the moment our heroine sets foot on campus, I recognized the landscape of an intense, crucible-like academic community. She faces all the usual problems of adjusting to her room mates, figuring out what classes to take (Literature? Classics?), how to relate to men, who she is and who she wants to become, who she loves and what she is willing to sacrifice for them. Even under normal conditions, the college years can be intense, baffling, agonizing, ecstatic and transformative. We know, of course, that Magic Is Afoot, for the cover and description clearly tell us so. Mysterious figures lurk everywhere, and even the college campus blurs into the mythic dimension at times. Dean throws in the sexual revolution made possible by the Pill, a drop-dead gorgeous lover-in-need-of-rescuing, Shakespearean actors who speak from experience, a ghost who throws books out of dorm windows, exams and courtship, plus some very nifty classes I wish I'd taken. This book is not only a keeper, but one I enthusiastically recommend to anyone who has been or has wanted to go to a small liberal arts collegeBook Review: Intertextuality heaven: "The star, the cup, the cross"
Summary: 5 Stars
This book sustained me through college and continues to sustain me through life.
It is a book for lovers of books and lovers of words.
Classic, medieval, or Renaissance majors will be in heaven.
As will anyone who enjoyed their time (or, who continues to) in the Ivory Tower.
Don't let this book fade away as if it never were.
It is far too beautiful not to be read, once, and then again, and then many times over.
Book Review: Just Awful
Summary: 1 Stars
Ugh! Having gone to a small liberal arts college in Ohio and spent much time studying and reading re-tellings of classic fairy tales and myths, I fully expected to love this book. I should have paid more attention to the negative reviews. I stubbornly refused to abandon "Tam Lin," but wish I had. I almost never give away my books, but I couldn't even stand having this one in the house anymore; I donated it to our lending library.
The characters -- the "heroine" included -- are insufferable; if English/Classics majors really spent all their time quoting poetry and spouting dead languages, which is what most of "Tam Lin"'s students do for the vast majority of the book, I would've abandoned my liberal arts college faster than I did "Tam Lin," that's for sure! I found that I couldn't bring myself to care one ounce about the fates of these characters. I think I finished only because I wanted to find out which elements of the original ballad the author retained or tried to weave in. This book does a disservice to the reputation of liberal arts colleges and their students; we are not vapid creatures whose sole focus is to stump each other by finding the most obscure literary quote ever.
All that said, I do think the concept is fantastic. I don't think it gives anything away to say that the choices made in which book characters replaced particular ballad characters were great. I just wish that I hadn't despised each and every one of them.
I have loved all of the other "Fairy Tale Series" titles I've been able to get my hands on -- "Jack of Kinrowan," "Fitcher's Bride," "Snow White, Blood Red" -- as well as the relatively new Canongate Myths Series (retellings of Greek myths). I'd recommend any of those; just not "Tam Lin."