Anna's Reviews > Tam Lin

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. 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. And then you never read it again.

Tam Lin is basically a modern re-telling of the Legend of Tam Lin. The characters are one dimensional, Janet is REALLY annoying and everyone is incredibly pretentious. I mean, I have an arts underground background myself and I don't know a SINGLE person who spouted poetry at me. Every last one person is some version of Elfine from Cold Comfort Farm...except I don't think Pamela Dean was trying to paint a funny caricature. They don't love one another, convey any sense of passion-nothing. It's hard to explain-I found the plot fascinating (in the sense that the creepy, foreboding nature of faerie is pretty well developed) but I didn't really like a single character. I thought they all acted like cardboard cutouts.