Tam Lin is basically a modern re-telling of the Legend of Tam Lin. It's somewhat irritating in that everyone in the book is incredibly boring (and the book largely seems to be about how people in college get into really boring sexual relationships but they're having SEX, so apparently it's super adult and interesting) but then after 8000 pages, all the relevant action takes place on pages 8001-8011 and then you spend a couple of hours flipping back through the whole book to see how the puzzle fits together. If you can get over the fact that this is some sort of retrospective paean to Carleton College and the author peggy sue's (whatever that phrase is) herself on to the protagonist, you'll enjoy the book. However, if you don't mind a book where the fantasy element is much more subtle and is woven into a story about college life and liberal arts majors who put their hearts into plays and walk around randomly quoting Shakespeare and the like to each other, there's magic, along with a lot of wit and humor, to be found in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.Ĭontent advisory: Nothing explicit, but several of the characters sleep with each other as college students typically would. If you're expecting a novel where magic and fantasy fill the entire story, or if you have little patience with reading about theatre and the arts and the college students who live and breathe them, this version of Tam Lin is not for you. There is a fantasy element to this story, but the magic creeps up extremely slowly until it burst into full bloom at the very end of the book - and I do mean the very end.

This version of the story follows Janet's life and times at a small liberal arts college, beginning as a freshman and going up to Halloween of her senior year, and her many interactions with her roommates and friends.

I suggest reading it before you read Tam Lin, to help you catch the many subtle clues and hints that tie this novel to the original ballad. This is a modern-day retelling of the old ballad of 'Tam Lin.' Here's one version of the old tale of Janet, the pregnant girl who tries to save her love from the Queen of Faerie. it's different, mostly a fairly straightforward story of a girl's college days, with just a few brief glimpses of magic around the edges. Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is one of those books that some people love and others can't stand.

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean