Customer Reviews

Tam Lin

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This book is full of lovely language, subtle references to the ballad of Tam Lin, unadulterated nostalgia for life at a liberal arts college in the 1970s, and characters who are flawed but endearing. I wore out one copy of this book and had to buy a second, which disappeared into a friend's library, so I had to buy a third. I reread it at least once a year, or whenever I want to read a beautifully written book which will reveal more on each successive reading.

However, lots of people hate this book. Some of the people who hate this book are people whose literary tastes I otherwise trust implicitly. It's hard to know why they hate it. They say they hate the cardboard characters (but the characters seemed to me to be both wonderful evocations of the archtypes they represented and also quite well-drawn as individuals). They say the book is pretentious (but I went to school with a bunch of people who talked like that -- we outgrew it, but the dialogue sang to me). They say the fairy tale is just nailed onto the ending of the book (but if you look, the details of the ballad are present from the first page -- and surely one of the things Dean is trying to say is that the fantastic has as its context the mundane). They say the writing is wooden (I disagree).

If you love lanugage, if you were ever a somewhat pretentious young intellectual, if you want to remember what it felt like to be 18 years old at a liberal arts college (and you didn't have to go to Carleton to feel the tug of nostalgia), you will probably like this book. But if you don't, you will be in good company.

I first read Tam Lin, well, I can't remember when. I've read it over and over since then, though, and each time I pick out new clues, new hints, new allusions, new jokes . . . This is a textbook example of a LAYERED novel.

As many other reviewers have pointed out, understanding this book can hinge on a liberal arts education. I had one, I'm happy to say--we even operated on a trimester system, just like Blackstock, the college Janet attends in the novel (which is loosely based on Carleton College in Minnesota--after reading this book, I seriously considering transfering there).

Now. The ending IS a bit rushed. I tallied it up once: Janet's freshman year takes up very nearly one half of the book, while her other three years take up progressively fewer pages. The "fairy tale" ending gets a similarly rushed treatment, but I don't think that necessarily detracts from the story as a whole, especially if you're familiar with the Tam Lin ballad--which I wasn't when I first read it, and I still loved it.

If you can find it, buy it. This isn't a book to be borrowed from the library and read once--you'll never catch everything. Buy it, read it, read it again, and then read it once more. After a year or so, read it again.

I was disappointed the first time I read this. While it was a very good novel about college life in the early 70s, I wanted to read a novel based on a fairy tale/folk legend. I enjoyed the literary dialogue bantered back and forth among the characters (believe it or not, my friends and I do speak this way; the curse of the overeducated!)

Curiosity had me turning back to the book a second time, and suddenly the world I blundered into was much richer. Without having the expectations of gnomes and wishes and magical events that I had the first time, the subtler wonders of this book unfolded. Tiny clues lead up to the suddenly otherworldly ending, ones that can't be understood on the first read-through.

Pamela Dean has to be a outstanding wordsmith, to manage to keep me interested through a 10 page decription of a uninspiring 17th century play, among other things. The pace may be slow, but it gives you a chance to watch the lovely scenary go by. For that reason, I love this book more every time I read it.

I reviewed this book two and a half years ago, when I first read it, and I feel the urge to re-review it and give a more mature perspective. (or, "How Tam Lin Impacted My Life")

Since reading this book I have read so many works of great literature (like the poetry of Keats, and _The Lady's Not for Burning_, and _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_, and the poetry of Pope) that I wouldn't have been introduced to, otherwise. Besides that, I've reread the book itself a thousand times, recommended it to everyone I know, and looked for everything else she wrote. (This is still my favorite.)

The plot in brief: Janet Carter (of Carterhaugh) goes off to college; discovers friends, literature, magic, mystery, and politics.

How realistic is it? Rather. I go to a small Midwestern liberal arts college (it's in Ohio, though); I reread the book two weeks after arriving here, and I knew exactly what Janet/Pamela Dean was talking about. Ending up with roommates (well, only one) you don't know a thing about, becoming friends with them, meeting large groups of guys . . . and in my experience, Theatre majors really do talk like that, except my theatre major friends are more likely to quote Sondheim than Shakespeare (being the musical variety). My father went through a physics class altogether too similar to Janet's; my friend's fencing class is altogether too much like Janet's; and there are people here who *would* set bizarre things like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to music. (Does this make you intrigued?)

The ballad plot, for the sticklers, comes in on page 73. There are hints and other ideas of it before that, but the actual opening of the ballad is page 73. That doesn't mean you can skip the first 72 pages of the book, however. They're just as vital, just as amusing, just as interesting as the next 72 pages, or the last 72 pages.

My first recommendation is: Read it! My second recommendation is: Read ANYTHING Janet does that sounds interesting. "If it Doesn't Work, It's Physics"

I read Tam Lin by chance, as it was recommended to me by a friend who happened to pick it up at the library out of the blue. All I can say is- thank goodness she did. Tam Lin is one of the best books I've ever read, and I'm quite critical. The characters are wonderful, real- those who wrote that they didn't like the book because Janet was "annoying" seem to be missing the point that only a well-written character can be human enough to be annoying sometimes. The plot develops at a slow, steady pace, which often I find irritating. Not this story- it was addictive from the first page. When I finished I went back to the beginning and read it again. When I'm craving good, pleasurable writing, I open my copy and start reading at random. Never have I found a book so easily quotable, as Dean's writing style is lyrical and crafted with almost impossible perfection. Lastly, I would read Tam Lin if only for the literary references- had I not read Tam Lin, I doubt I would have read The Lady's Not For Burning.

College is a time which so many of us yearn to recapture. The energy and intensity, the freedom and growth, the importance of thought and opinion are all slowly-fading memories this Golden Age in our lives. In this book, Ms. Dean captures the oft-remembered magic and overwhelming optimism of the undergraduate years and reminds us of the days when choosing courses, battling advisors, and seeing plays with friends were all integral parts of life. It is within this fairy-tale environment of college that Dean sets her interpretation of the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin, the story of a young woman's quest to save her lover from the Queen of Faerie.

Much of the greatness of this book comes not only from Dean's magnificent portrayal of the lives of her characters, but also from the way in which the realm of Faerie creeps into the story unobtrusively, mysteriously, and malignly. This is no sweet tale of elves and sprites, but a full-fledged Fairy Tale in its spookiest and most magical sense, where the reader and the characters are unaware of what is really happening around them until they are completely entwined. With great skill and obvious joy, Dean interweaves the two worlds flawlessly, with brilliant characterization and beautiful language.

It is impossible to pay sufficient tribute to this book, where this gifted author has brought together age-old literary and folk-tale themes and set them in this jewel of a story. The tale is dark at times, but the prose is light and flowing, and the characters are incredibly sympathetic. As many others have commented, Tam Lin is by far one of the best books I have read. It requires frequent re-reading and never fails to enthrall and amaze me with its magical story-telling and engrossing plot. I highly recommend Tam Lin to all who love literature, worship words, and see the potential sparkle of magic in college campuses in autumn. It is simply a joy.

Pamela Dean weaves together a beautiful narrative of college life and the mysterious ballad of Tam Lin, crafting a book that is full of infinite delight. If obscure English Literature references annoy you, this book is not for you. However, if you are instead intrigued by oblique Shakespearean references, as I am, then definitely READ this book! Pamela Dean contrives to build a wonderfully suspenseful and ethereal atmosphere, and sustains it throughout the book, immersing her readers in the mystery that is present in both folklore and college life.

A lot of the other reviews that I've read have criticized this book as not devoting enough of it's time to the retelling of the old ballad. That may or may not be true for a person that reads it for that aspect. I came to Dean's _Tam Lin_ through the recommendations of multiple friends, so all I expected was a good read. I found it. In fact, I almost felt that her marvelous characters and setting were wasted on a story that didn't leave much room for a sequel. I liked the slow set up that allowed us to get to know the characters and the way the relationships grew and changed over time. While the big jumps through time were a little jolting, I can't imagine how long this book would have had to have been to describe all four years with the detail spent on the first year, or on the last two months. This is one of the few books that really stuck with me for days after I read it, and one that I definitely want to read again.

I recently picked this book up again and was surprized at what I found. People complain about the literary references and the "intuitive" dialogue, but as an English major I remember really talking like that at University. If just one person reads Christopher Fry's "The Lady's Not for Burning" after reading this book; it will have done a great service to the world. So much of this is an intertwining of multiple stories and references with characters who have the same name. There are also ways to deal with cliques, the pressures of being an "inside" outsider [the leading character is a professor's daughter], changing social mores. And the problem with falling in love serially in an intertwining group of friends. All of these are continuing issues in most lives. This book is beautiful.

I had never read any of Dean's work before finding this in the bookstore, and I have to say that, as an English major who despairs of ever finding any novels at all with any true literary value, much less a fantasy novel that is jam-packed with in-jokes and lovely, obscure quotes that expressed that characters' feelings so beautifully and succinctly, I was overjoyed to read this in excess of 10 times before one of my friends pilfered it. For those readers who find that Dean does not cater sufficiently to the plot of the ballad of Tam Lin, I suggest a more careful reading. It is all there, buried in between the mundane happenings of everyday life, which is, I think, Dean's point. The one complaint that I do have is that Dean does not partition the book well. That may also be intentional, giving the reader a sense of how life flies by so quickly as one matures.

At any rate, it is fun to try and find the source of her thousands of quotations, and it is even more fun to love the characters and to care about them and about what happens to them. I almost went to Carleton because of this book... :)