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Book Review: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Nov. 7th, 2010 03:58 pmTitle: Tam Lin
Author: Pamela Dean
Published: New York: Tor, 1991
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 468
Total Page Count: 94,696
Text Number: 272
Read Because: interest in fairy tale retellings, borrowed from the library
Review: 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.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Pamela Dean
Published: New York: Tor, 1991
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 468
Total Page Count: 94,696
Text Number: 272
Read Because: interest in fairy tale retellings, borrowed from the library
Review: 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.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
