Tam Lin

[sawyl]

Correcting a serious omission I've finally found time to read Pamela Dean's legendary Tam Lin, an update of the classic ballard set on the campus of a small liberal arts college in Minnesota in the early 1970s. The meandering story follows Janet Carter and her two roommates, Molly and Tina, as they become involved with three boys from the Classics Department and find themselves caught up in some of Blackstock College's (extremely) eccentric local traditions.

Rather like Jo Walton's Among Others, a good deal of Tam Lin is about what it's like to grow up with a love of books and poetry and drama. But unlike Walton's Mori, Janet isn't alone in her enthusiasms: Molly, Robin, Nick and Thomas all share her passion, and a good deal of the book is spent quoting Shakespeare and Keats and mulling over subtextual details. Only poor Tina, whom Thomas describes as lacking imagination, is left out of the literary fun:

Thomas sighed heavily. "But she doesn't — she hasn't — she doesn't read. Well, she will, if I ask her to; but it doesn't take, somehow. She hasn't any imaginative life."

Dean, P. (2006), Tam Lin, Firebird, 241-242

Which is unfortunate, because some of the key moments in the book depend on a certain amount of literary knowledge. Such as the Classics boys, assisted by a few friends, put on a performance of Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, hoping to use it like the The Murder of Gonzago in Hamlet to catch the conscience of Professor Medeous, who rules her department like a private fiefdom. Or Janet's sudden comprehension of the nature of her relationship with Nick, which occurs courtesy of Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning.

Although the general atmosphere is one of sunny joy, filled with the excitement of clever people learning new thing and come to discover who they really are, there are clouds along the way. The dark hints about the origins of the fourth Ericson ghost, the rumours about a girl who killed herself a few years before, the feeling of a happy time of life flashing past all too quickly, and the unsettling foreknowledge — to anyone who knows anything about the ballard — of the fate that Janet will eventually have to face.

I highly recommend Tam Lin. The tone is perfectly judged, the bookish discussions are a pure delight, and the plot twists the apparently disparate elements of the plot into a neat final knot. But, best of all, I found it threw new light on a whole range of other much loved novels based on the same or similar themes, including Bear's delicious Promethean Age series.