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From the bestselling author of The Last Unicorn comes an "engaging story of a friendship that transcends time"(Library Journal)... Arriving in the magnificent countryside of Dorset, England, to live with her mother and new stepfather, the young and very American Jenny Gluckstein has little interest in her historic surroundings, including that of the 700 acre Stourhead Farm her stepfather is restoring. Then she meets Tamsin, a kindred spirit that has haunted the lonely estate for 300 years, trapped by a hidden trauma she can't remember, and by a powerful evil even the spirits of night cannot name. To help her, Jenny must delve deeper into the dark world than any human has in centuries, and face a danger that will change her life forever.… (more)
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Enchanting and masterful, dealing equally gracefully with the violent history of the Dorset region and the concerns and complaints of contemporary teenagers, Tamsin is that rare book equally suited to teen readers and adults. Highly recommended.
This is a beautiful book. I believe if I went to Dorset, I would recognize this farm...and if I met Jenny, I would know her too. How a sixty (or is it seventy?) year old man can manage to make you believe he is really a thirteen year old girl is a mystery to me, but Beagle does it, in spades. And the relationship between Tamsin and Jenny is so touching that every time I read this book, I cry.
Here's a little footnote: I bought this book to stick in my daughter Anna's stocking one Christmas, but thought I ought to read a chapter first, to make sure it was readable. Four hours later I finished the book and headed back to the bookstore to buy three more copies - one for each of the daughters. I kept the first one.
I think this is one of those stories people will either love or hate. I'm firmly in the "loved it" camp. The tale moves at a slow and deliberate pace as we're introduced to Jenny and her life in New York. Jenny is quite the character! I remember what it was like being an teenage girl with plenty of angst and I'm impressed with how well Beagle was able to capture that feeling without making me hate her. Deliberately making yourself difficult as a passive aggressive way to deal with life? Yeah, I remember that to. This story is firmly YA in that regard so if you don't enjoy reading teenage angst, you should probably avoid this book.
The farm is quite haunted. I loved how Beagle pulled out so many local myths to inhabit Stourhead. Even though it was published in 1999, the book reads like "timeless" children's literature. Jenny and the haunts on the farm feel like they could have come out of virtually any time period prior to the internet age.
The story was absolutely delightful. Beagle writes such beautiful and atmospheric prose that I found myself completely whisked away into the night world of Stourhead Farm. I truly enjoyed my time getting to know Jenny, Tamsin, Mister Cat and all the creatures she encounters as Jenny unravels what is keeping Tamsin from moving on. I was sad when the story ended as I really wasn't ready to leave Stourhead.
It begins with thirteen-year-old Jenny Gluckstein whose mother has found an Englishman to follow back to Dorset where he is tasked with bringing life
As Jenny becomes, not acclimated, but used to her new home and new family, she also finds that the land and house has a previous inhabitant named Tamsin Willoughby who cannot leave this earth yet. Even though she died three hundred years ago during the Bloody Assizes, she is stuck to this earth with her own cat, Miss Sophia Brown, and she introduces Jenny to Willoughby Farm and its denizens, including a Pooka and the Black Dog, and provides a warning about the Oak Wood.
Peter Beagle is able to weave legend and story in such an accessible manner. And the thoughts of a thirteen-year-old girl (as I once was) all come together to create a non-scary ghost story and the fate of country folk and the unique brevity of life for us all.
For Tamsin, he offers a narrator who might have come off as unlikeable in the hands of a less-talented author. Instead, even though she is stubborn and self-centered at times, Beagle's masterful treatment shows her evolution to someone the reader can feel good cheering on. The story itself has so many nods and winks to traditional English faeries and goblins that it's just fun to read as well.
I have to admit, however, that this book didn't quite live up to my expectations (set high, recently, by 'The Inkeeper's Song' and a couple of Beagle's short stories.
A rebellious teenager, Jenny, is reluctantly transplanted from NYC to the English countryside. She's got a new
To me (writing from NYC), I found that the evocation of British country life and folklore was vivid and effective. However, the beginning of the book - the portrayal of Jenny's life here in New York - I found completely unconvincing. I actually had to look up Beagle's stats - he's really American, not British, which is just weird, because I didn't feel like he captured what it's like to live in New York AT ALL. It's hard to put my finger on why, but one example is, upon arrival in London, Jenny's mom points out people wearing saris to her daughter like it's something new and unusual. Umm, it would be very hard to grow up in NYC and never have seen people wearing Indian traditional dress. But that's really just the first few pages.
Jenny Gluckstein is thirteen years old, and living with her divorced mother, a music teacher in New York, and visiting
And then her mother announces she's marrying her boyfriend, Evan McHugh, and that she and Jenny are moving to England with him. She'll be leaving her friends, her life, and Mister Cat will spend six months in quarantine. But her new stepbrothers, Tony and Julian, aren't too bad. Also, at least she'll be living in London, and she'll like London.
Except that Evan gets a new job, managing a farm in Dorset. And the house they'll be living in turns out to be barely habitable.
Jenny's a real pill through all this, and she knows it, and it's mostly intentional. She does eventually meet a girl at school, Meena Chari, whose efforts at friendship she cannot defeat, and eventually the six months are over and she gets Mister Cat back, and things get a little better.
The house is haunted, of course. There are lots of hints, but eventually Mister Cat brings Jenny proof, in the form of his new girlfriend, a ghost Persian. After a little more time, Jenny meets the Persian's person, Tamsin Willoughby, the daughter of Roger Willoughby, the founder of Stourhead Farm.
Tamsin has been dead for three hundred years, having died around the time of the Bloody Assizes, in 1685. She needs to move on, she should have moved on long ago, but there's something she needs to do first, and she can't remember what it is. It begins to seem that perhaps she doesn't really want to remember what it is. Jenny gradually realizes that, as much as she wants Tamsin to stick around, her continued presence is causing strange problems around Stourhead, and things need to be set right. Over the next couple of years, she meets a Pooka, the billy-blind, the Black Dog , the Old Lady of the Elder Tree, and assorted other unusual beings--along with just about the most terrifying ghost I've encountered. Oh, and the Wild Hunt, too.
It's a very good book, even if in some ways the most peculiar part of it is being that convincingly back inside my own adolescent head again.
That’s how good a book it is.
The other day I was getting ready to go to the rec center, and I had picked out two books to read while I was working out, and they were two wondrous and captivating books: The Color Purple – which I might add I haven’t read for two years (good heavens, I cannot believe it has been that long) and was thus absolutely aching to read – and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, which I had forgotten about until recently. These two books were on the kitchen counter ready to go, but then I remembered I wanted to glance at the topics for my Victorian lit paper, and I had to download them and my computer was running slow and what with one thing and another I grabbed Tamsin to read while I was waiting for that to work. I wasn’t even reading for two minutes, literally, but when I went to put Tamsin down and go exercise, my hand wouldn’t let go of it. Even though, even though, I had these two completely brilliant books waiting for me on the kitchen counter.
That’s how good a book it is.