Almost instantly upon meeting Tina, Janet takes against her. I particularly liked Janet’s relationship with Tina, one of her two roommates. She feels like someone I might actually meet, and might not like, exactly, but would like to listen to: she always has something interesting to say, as all the best narrators should. Certain enough, in fact, that she often merely hints at them rather than explaining them outright: people with proper literary opinions will simply understand what she means. Janet is brilliant, persnickety, quite funny and quite sure of her own literary opinions. It is, rather, meandering the aim is not to get anywhere in particular, but to explore Janet’s intellectual growth and the world of Blackstock College. This is not to say that it’s aimless or dull. The heroine doesn’t end up with the guy she spends most of the book dating. It’s a fantasy book, but nothing indisputably fantastical happens until the last chapter. It takes place in college, which is a somewhat unusual setting. Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is not quite like anything else I’ve ever read, and given how many books I’ve read, that’s saying something.
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