{"id":2274,"date":"2016-12-03T10:25:07","date_gmt":"2016-12-03T18:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2274"},"modified":"2016-12-03T10:25:07","modified_gmt":"2016-12-03T18:25:07","slug":"review-tam-lin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2274","title":{"rendered":"Review: Tam Lin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin<\/em> is slippery and solid at the same time.\u00a0 As an interpretation of a ballad about Faerie, that’s delightful.<\/p>\n

I found my way to it by way of Jo Walton’s glowing review in her excellent What Makes This Book So Great<\/em><\/a>, a gift that keeps on giving.\u00a0 That collection of reviews is well worth reading.\u00a0 Tam Lin<\/em> seems hard to come by electronically, which also delayed me.\u00a0 The LA Public Library<\/a> has a solid electronic version.\u00a0 Now that my hat tipping is done, let me talk about Tam Lin<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Tam Lin<\/em> is\u00a0 part of a series of fairy tales re-imagined, and much of the introductory and other supporting materials in my edition describe that clearly.\u00a0 It would be interesting to spring Tam Lin<\/em> on someone without that warning. For much, if not most, of the telling the book is a sweet coming-of-age story set at a small liberal arts college in Minnesota in the early 1970’s. The narrator is a winning young woman, Janet Carter.<\/p>\n

As a character, she’s tough to beat.\u00a0 She’s universal enough that anyone can relate to her – including a male hillbilly from Western New York born a decade later – but specific enough to be instantly memorable and recognizable. The rest of the cast is equally well-realized. I love the idea of spending time with her and her literary, witty, quirky, friends.<\/p>\n

Most of Tam Lin f<\/em>ollows Janet and her compatriots through almost 4 years of school, with the shifting alliances, hard work, incongruous moments, and other excitement of that thrilling time.\u00a0 I’m a sucker for coming-of-age stuff, and this is brilliant.<\/p>\n

All that was such good stuff that without the introductory materials, I wouldn’t have noticed the fantastic elements coalescing.\u00a0 When they do, the world cants in exactly the way it would if one woke up in a horror movie.\u00a0 Janet doesn’t let us down in any way: she’s resourceful, intelligent, and every inch the capable hero.\u00a0 The world she’s in changes its details and fundamentals – a literary world becomes a genre-based one – but she’s constant.\u00a0 New rules, but everyone stays who they are.<\/p>\n

As is my wont, I’ve talked about the details and features I liked about Tam Lin<\/em>, but forget all that.\u00a0 Tam Lin is a great story well told.<\/p>\n

A must.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is slippery and solid at the same time.\u00a0 As an interpretation of a ballad about Faerie, that’s delightful. I found my way to it by way of Jo Walton’s glowing review in her excellent What Makes This Book So Great, a gift that keeps on giving.\u00a0 That collection of reviews is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2274"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2279,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions\/2279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}