Read for the Mythopoeic Award and TBR 2008 Reading Challenges.
I should start this by noting that with the combination of L going back to school, and Sigerson’s recent post on LJ about the classes she’s taking this fall, I was feeling rather wistful about my college days. And then I read Tam Lin, and fell straight into the middle of the biggest attack of college nostalgia I’ve had in years.
Tam Lin, above all, is a brilliant story of college life, or at least the college life I had at a small liberal arts college. Sure the book is set in the 70s, in Minnesota, with an English major as a the main protagonist, and I went to school in the 90s, in Connecticut, and majored in zoology, but I found myself following the action of this book with an immediacy I seldom feel, because I’ve been there.
Well, I’ve been through most of it. The book at heart is a fairy tale, and I can’t say I’ve experienced that, but I will say that it was handled so deftly that while you knew something was going on, the fairy aspects weren’t the feature of the story. I think it was far more about growing up and learning about what you really want.
I loved the book. I’ve had it in my wishlist for ages, and really wonder what the heck took me so long to read it. I did finally manage to get it through Paperspine, but I’m leaving it on my wishlist, because this is one I definitely want to own.