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Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary
Inspired by a traditional ballad, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary is the tale of a mysterious young man and three ordinary young girls, of ancient magic and the modern world.
Three sisters live comfortably with their Juniper, 16, who likes cooking and computer chats; Gentian, 13, who likes plays and astronomy; Rosemary, 11, who likes Girl Scouts. Enter Dominic, handsome as the night, quoting poetry, telling riddles, and asking help for a complex and fascinating science project.
Gentian isn't interested at first--she has her own life. But gradually her life, and her time, belong more and more to Dominic and his project, and her father begins to fear that the lad may be more than a charmer. . . .
Three sisters live comfortably with their Juniper, 16, who likes cooking and computer chats; Gentian, 13, who likes plays and astronomy; Rosemary, 11, who likes Girl Scouts. Enter Dominic, handsome as the night, quoting poetry, telling riddles, and asking help for a complex and fascinating science project.
Gentian isn't interested at first--she has her own life. But gradually her life, and her time, belong more and more to Dominic and his project, and her father begins to fear that the lad may be more than a charmer. . . .
350 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Pamela Dean
41 books189 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Pamela Dean is an American fantasy author best known for Tam Lin, a novel that reimagines the classic Scottish fairy tale in a Midwestern college setting inspired by her alma mater, Carleton College. She has written six novels, including The Secret Country Trilogy, The Dubious Hills, and Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, and has contributed short stories to various anthologies.
A member of the influential writing group The Scribblies, alongside authors such as Emma Bull and Patricia Wrede, Dean was also a contributor to the Liavek shared-world anthologies and is part of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship. Her work is often praised for its lyrical prose, literary depth, and rich mythological influences.
Both Tam Lin and The Dubious Hills were nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She has also written essays and reviews, showcasing her deep engagement with fantasy literature. Readers drawn to intelligent, literary fantasy with a strong sense of folklore and academia will find much to love in her work.
Pamela Dean is an American fantasy author best known for Tam Lin, a novel that reimagines the classic Scottish fairy tale in a Midwestern college setting inspired by her alma mater, Carleton College. She has written six novels, including The Secret Country Trilogy, The Dubious Hills, and Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, and has contributed short stories to various anthologies.
A member of the influential writing group The Scribblies, alongside authors such as Emma Bull and Patricia Wrede, Dean was also a contributor to the Liavek shared-world anthologies and is part of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship. Her work is often praised for its lyrical prose, literary depth, and rich mythological influences.
Both Tam Lin and The Dubious Hills were nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She has also written essays and reviews, showcasing her deep engagement with fantasy literature. Readers drawn to intelligent, literary fantasy with a strong sense of folklore and academia will find much to love in her work.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
October 8, 2018
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Arthur Conan Doyle
Ah, if only more YA novels were like this one, a book peopled with smart, intelligent teen girls who enjoy spending time with their parents (I did mention this is a fantasy, didn't I?) Girls who discuss philosophy, literature, religion, and science instead of boys . . . until one particular boy shows up: a freakishly intelligent dreamboat of a boy who speaks mostly in quotations, and . . .
It was odd that he should have read so many of the things her family and friends had.
He subtly worms his way into the good graces of three sisters, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, though thirteen-year-old Gentian seems most vulnerable to the boy's wiles. She helps him build a time machine in the family's attic, discovering too late that there are many ways to travel through time.
This is an odd read that has mesmerized me twice now. I almost never reread books unless I've assigned them five stars, yet this one was, and still is, only a four star tale for me. And, yet . . . I'll undoubtedly read it again.
Weird . . .
Arthur Conan Doyle
Ah, if only more YA novels were like this one, a book peopled with smart, intelligent teen girls who enjoy spending time with their parents (I did mention this is a fantasy, didn't I?) Girls who discuss philosophy, literature, religion, and science instead of boys . . . until one particular boy shows up: a freakishly intelligent dreamboat of a boy who speaks mostly in quotations, and . . .
It was odd that he should have read so many of the things her family and friends had.
He subtly worms his way into the good graces of three sisters, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, though thirteen-year-old Gentian seems most vulnerable to the boy's wiles. She helps him build a time machine in the family's attic, discovering too late that there are many ways to travel through time.
This is an odd read that has mesmerized me twice now. I almost never reread books unless I've assigned them five stars, yet this one was, and still is, only a four star tale for me. And, yet . . . I'll undoubtedly read it again.
Weird . . .
January 11, 2009
Speaking of YMMV authors...man, are there few others who both delight and frustrate me as much as Pamela Dean! As usual, when it comes to the day-to-day minutiae of life—school, eating, interpersonal relations—Dean can be incredibly, incredibly compelling. But when it comes to actual plot, well...
As with Tam Lin, this novel's pacing is oddly backloaded; the same thing happens where the supernatural element doesn't emerge until almost the end. I was actually warned me about this, although I didn't find it "perfectly appropriate"—again, I felt that the book may have in fact been stronger were it not a fantasy at all. Dean actually has some amusing meta-commentary on this criticism in JGR, so it's something she's obviously aware of; however, I still couldn't shake the feeling that the metaphor underlying the novel's conclusion and its fantasy element was much stronger than what actually, on a tangible level, occurred. It's like...you know how on the early seasons of Buffy, the MotW would often be used to address some metaphorical concern about high school? Like, the girl who felt invisible would actually become invisible? In Dean's case, the metaphorical message of the book—sometimes friendships fracture and the various parties drift apart and you don't realize it's happened until after it's over (especially when BOYS are involved)—would have I think worked better if they'd just literally been allowed to happen, rather than been attached to a fantasy plotline that, in my opinion, didn't really hold up. Though it would have been cool if the fantasy elements had just worked better, too.
All in all, I prefer Tam Lin, which has more rewards for lesser levels of frustration.
As with Tam Lin, this novel's pacing is oddly backloaded; the same thing happens where the supernatural element doesn't emerge until almost the end. I was actually warned me about this, although I didn't find it "perfectly appropriate"—again, I felt that the book may have in fact been stronger were it not a fantasy at all. Dean actually has some amusing meta-commentary on this criticism in JGR, so it's something she's obviously aware of; however, I still couldn't shake the feeling that the metaphor underlying the novel's conclusion and its fantasy element was much stronger than what actually, on a tangible level, occurred. It's like...you know how on the early seasons of Buffy, the MotW would often be used to address some metaphorical concern about high school? Like, the girl who felt invisible would actually become invisible? In Dean's case, the metaphorical message of the book—sometimes friendships fracture and the various parties drift apart and you don't realize it's happened until after it's over (especially when BOYS are involved)—would have I think worked better if they'd just literally been allowed to happen, rather than been attached to a fantasy plotline that, in my opinion, didn't really hold up. Though it would have been cool if the fantasy elements had just worked better, too.
All in all, I prefer Tam Lin, which has more rewards for lesser levels of frustration.
August 4, 2007
The plot here is a bit thin, but the writing and characterization are so well-done that they carry the book, although the ending left me dissatisfied. Lots of excellent conversation between intelligent characters considering interesting questions and ideas. Like most of Dean's work, heavily laced with poetry and literary allusions.
November 13, 2011
This is one of those books you love (if you love it) for the feel of it, not so much for the plot. It's a modern retelling of an old Scottish folk ballad, involving either the devil or a fine young man, and a marriage or a trap, but either way a set of riddles which the heroine of the ballad needs to solve in order to win his heart/escape. You see how it's already a bit confusing.
In this story, it's 1990's Milwuakee, and the plants of the title are three sisters, with Gentian, the middle at 13, our teller of the tale. These three girls are smart, almost painfully so, with witty parents and lackadasical schooling, though of course they are all self-educated and hard working little smarties, who can quote Shakespeare, Keats, and historical astronomers with equal panache. The devil lies in the form of Dominic, a beautiful, mysterious boy who moves in next door and speaks entirely in epigrams, which fortunately annoys Gentian as much as it does the reader, so it's not so bad.
Gentian, her equally precious friends, and her erudite family, come together in a very specific kind of world, which I admit I am not quite smart enough to completely follow. The book walks a very fine line between being engaging and obnoxious, and occasionally tips over onto the wrong side. However, Gentian is practical enough to be engaging, and by and large, the book makes me wish that when I was a smart young girl (as we all know I was), I had friends and family as indulgent and eccentric as Gentian's own. This is why the book is one I love and read over and over - because despite the essentially confusing and pointless plot, the characters and world they inhabit is fascinating to me. If you read widely, considered yourself an outsider kid, and wished you had a telescope dome in your attic so you could stay up all night and watch the stars (and had parents and a school that didn't mind if you didn't make it to class on time, or at all), then this book will probably enchant you. Otherwise, you may want to punch it in the nose, which is a pretty reasonable option as well.
In this story, it's 1990's Milwuakee, and the plants of the title are three sisters, with Gentian, the middle at 13, our teller of the tale. These three girls are smart, almost painfully so, with witty parents and lackadasical schooling, though of course they are all self-educated and hard working little smarties, who can quote Shakespeare, Keats, and historical astronomers with equal panache. The devil lies in the form of Dominic, a beautiful, mysterious boy who moves in next door and speaks entirely in epigrams, which fortunately annoys Gentian as much as it does the reader, so it's not so bad.
Gentian, her equally precious friends, and her erudite family, come together in a very specific kind of world, which I admit I am not quite smart enough to completely follow. The book walks a very fine line between being engaging and obnoxious, and occasionally tips over onto the wrong side. However, Gentian is practical enough to be engaging, and by and large, the book makes me wish that when I was a smart young girl (as we all know I was), I had friends and family as indulgent and eccentric as Gentian's own. This is why the book is one I love and read over and over - because despite the essentially confusing and pointless plot, the characters and world they inhabit is fascinating to me. If you read widely, considered yourself an outsider kid, and wished you had a telescope dome in your attic so you could stay up all night and watch the stars (and had parents and a school that didn't mind if you didn't make it to class on time, or at all), then this book will probably enchant you. Otherwise, you may want to punch it in the nose, which is a pretty reasonable option as well.
February 12, 2022
“you won’t understand anything but it will be perfect” is the pamela dean guarantee!
August 13, 2023
Brilliant mashup: coming-of-age plus fantasy plus (and this last is always a winner for me) a retelling of a folk song.
More precisely: it's a reluctant coming-of-age [14-year-olds who sense that they're in danger of losing what each of them values most about themself]; fantasy that sneaks into a solidly real 1990s world and gradually darkens until the climactic episode; and a retelling of a fairly obscure folk song that I don't even recall hearing before.
Here's the thing: I read about a third of the story and suddenly thought, "I'm missing some clues." So I started over, and actually I missed many of them again, and misinterpreted the ones I did catch. But going forward, I knew the characters better (there are 7 young girls and their shifting alliances to follow, plus families and friends). And themes and riddles and quotations began to echo and add up. So all of that saved me from feeling, as some readers do, that the fantasy stuff only kicks in suddenly towards the end.
And this might amuse those who've already read it:
I don't actually think this is a book many young YA readers will enjoy. I think many of them might feel it slow, the 7 girls arch and bookish and their interests obscure and pretentious. I'd call it New Adult. Or Old Adult, like me.
I don't assign stars to living authors, except to those few books I plan to keep and reopen on rainy days--or in this case, starry nights.
More precisely: it's a reluctant coming-of-age [14-year-olds who sense that they're in danger of losing what each of them values most about themself]; fantasy that sneaks into a solidly real 1990s world and gradually darkens until the climactic episode; and a retelling of a fairly obscure folk song that I don't even recall hearing before.
Here's the thing: I read about a third of the story and suddenly thought, "I'm missing some clues." So I started over, and actually I missed many of them again, and misinterpreted the ones I did catch. But going forward, I knew the characters better (there are 7 young girls and their shifting alliances to follow, plus families and friends). And themes and riddles and quotations began to echo and add up. So all of that saved me from feeling, as some readers do, that the fantasy stuff only kicks in suddenly towards the end.
And this might amuse those who've already read it:
I don't actually think this is a book many young YA readers will enjoy. I think many of them might feel it slow, the 7 girls arch and bookish and their interests obscure and pretentious. I'd call it New Adult. Or Old Adult, like me.
I don't assign stars to living authors, except to those few books I plan to keep and reopen on rainy days--or in this case, starry nights.
July 3, 2014
I have read a lot (like, a metric gollyton) of books where the author tried to blend the realistic and the magical seamlessly together. Pamela Dean goes a good deal farther: she blends the realistic and lifelike with the mythic.
Gentian and her sisters Juniper and Rosemary are leading busy lives, the lives of intelligent children of intelligent parents, pursuing their various interests (cooking, poetry, Scouting, astronomy). It's a very attractive slice of life in a family you would love to have living next door, or to have been born into. Dean could have simply described a busy year in this family's life and had a first-rate modern version of an E. Nesbit book. Instead, she reached a bit deeper, and when I say deeper, I mean she pulled aside the curtain to show forces at work beyond our knowledge -- but not entirely beyond our control.
Gentian is young, but she knows that young romance is a flirtation with dangerous forces, and that it puts her in danger of getting her heart broken. She knows that having Dominic in her life might cost her. She just has no idea, in Dominic's case, what those powers are, or how dangerous they are, or what it might cost her.
Gentian does survive, at a cost. She just doesn't know what that cost will turn out to be, either.
I would recommend this book to any reader, but especially to intelligent 13-year-old girls, or their parents.
Gentian and her sisters Juniper and Rosemary are leading busy lives, the lives of intelligent children of intelligent parents, pursuing their various interests (cooking, poetry, Scouting, astronomy). It's a very attractive slice of life in a family you would love to have living next door, or to have been born into. Dean could have simply described a busy year in this family's life and had a first-rate modern version of an E. Nesbit book. Instead, she reached a bit deeper, and when I say deeper, I mean she pulled aside the curtain to show forces at work beyond our knowledge -- but not entirely beyond our control.
Gentian is young, but she knows that young romance is a flirtation with dangerous forces, and that it puts her in danger of getting her heart broken. She knows that having Dominic in her life might cost her. She just has no idea, in Dominic's case, what those powers are, or how dangerous they are, or what it might cost her.
Gentian does survive, at a cost. She just doesn't know what that cost will turn out to be, either.
I would recommend this book to any reader, but especially to intelligent 13-year-old girls, or their parents.
March 16, 2007
This book has perfectly captured exactly the kind of person I was in junior high school, (and the kind of friends I WISHED I had!) and what it's like to realize you're growing up and there's nothing you can do to stop it. From the book:
"...Everything's changing so much. I don't even know how tall I am or what size bra I wear, and when I had that cold last week I got out a Goosebumps book to read, and it was so bad I wondered if somebody had taken the inside away and substituted a different one. "
"...Everything's changing so much. I don't even know how tall I am or what size bra I wear, and when I had that cold last week I got out a Goosebumps book to read, and it was so bad I wondered if somebody had taken the inside away and substituted a different one. "
March 24, 2013
This book is an endless conversation about books. And about religion and right or wrong and about friendship and family. Oh, and there's magic. Not much happens, but I love it dearly.
August 19, 2011
I enjoyed Dean’s retelling of Tam Lin quite a bit, so I decided to try another of her books. I liked it, especially the book bits, and Becky. I suppose, very much especially Becky. I was startled, though, by how little space the sort of action of the story took up. It was all very slow and philosophical–which isn’t a complaint, necessarily. In general, I loved the way it was so much about friendship, and sisterhood. [March 2011]
March 10, 2023
……….hmmm. somewhere between 3 and 4. I love Pamela deans writing but this one didn’t inspire the rabid derangement that tam Lin made me experience. It had about the same ratio of Shakespeare quotes, descriptions of food and hideous outfits to magic as that book does but I think the folktale elements worked a lot better there than here. I just found myself……confused tbh, in the way that fire and hemlock confused me the first time. not in a cute way like a literally what actually happened way.
also the main character is an eighth grader who is obsessed with astronomy and while that was cute in its own way it also grew wearing pretty quickly
also the main character is an eighth grader who is obsessed with astronomy and while that was cute in its own way it also grew wearing pretty quickly
July 23, 2013
BEST BOOK OF 2013--which I think mostly indicates what terrible things I've been "reading" all year in my doldrums (with exceptions of Bryher and H.D. and Robert Duncan on H.D.). Still, this was staggeringly perfect and came at a perfect time. I was so ensnared and still so enspelled when I finished that I immediately went back to the beginning and read all my favourite parts again. As I wrote Moi, who gave the genius recommendation in the first place:
Where was this book when I was 19? I would've felt a lot less lonely. And dated many fewer handsome jerks, possibly. Possibly maybe. And it links one through to so many other wonderful artists and thinkers (Laurie Anderson! Weetzie Bat/Witch Baby shout-out!) that one feels positively embraced and at home in a thickly peopled world of writers and friends.
I stayed up till TWO last night finishing Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, which is my new favorite everything. I needed that book SO badly right now, it is so resonant: that feeling of having been in a spell, ensorcelled, in a time loop, while one's female friends wonder where the hell one has gone, and one knows all the while how inadequate one's sexist male companion really is, how inscrutable and unhealthy....yeah. Also, ASTRONOMY, my first love! And a cat.
Where was this book when I was 19? I would've felt a lot less lonely. And dated many fewer handsome jerks, possibly. Possibly maybe. And it links one through to so many other wonderful artists and thinkers (Laurie Anderson! Weetzie Bat/Witch Baby shout-out!) that one feels positively embraced and at home in a thickly peopled world of writers and friends.
July 26, 2011
Not as wonderful as the beloved TAM LIN, which I've read countless times, but quite a bit of fun. This one was mainly about Gentian and her handful of loyal friends (banded together, they call themselves the Giant Ants), though her two sisters pop up quite often. This is a wonderful family, as they all five sit around and read Shakespeare together -- the parents read science fiction, and all of them are readers, which is easily noted by their glib way of discussing things and dropping quotes (a classic Pamela Dean thing, I've noticed). Gentian is an astronomer who becomes oddly enamored with the new kid on the block -- who speaks ONLY in quotes, ye gods -- and who just happens to live in the strange house next door that appeared practically overnight.
I especially enjoyed Gentian's camaraderie with her friends. They were all readers, scholarly, with their minds on things of importance to them, which were usually NOT the typical preteen conformity. On the other hand, I wish I could say I had been like that at 13.
I especially enjoyed Gentian's camaraderie with her friends. They were all readers, scholarly, with their minds on things of importance to them, which were usually NOT the typical preteen conformity. On the other hand, I wish I could say I had been like that at 13.
January 21, 2020
Lovely, as always, though I stumbled a bit over what may be Dean's characteristic backloading of plot. Everything seems to happen in the last fifty pages, and I'm still not sure WHAT the central point of the book was. An allegory for growing up seems likely, but with the whole book bogged down by quotations, who really knows?
March 17, 2017
This was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
December 21, 2022
Spoilers, although the parts being spoiled are, imo, the least interesting parts.
This is an extremely weird book. On the one hand, it's a coming-of-age story, about three sisters (the titular plants are their names) having a more-or-less ideal -- well, it's ideal if you're a highly educated feminist -- childhood in 90s suburban Minnesota. The focus is mainly on 13-year-old Gentian, who is experiencing some typical problems for someone of that age. She's worried about the way her close childhood friend group seems to be drifting apart; she's having trouble understanding why her best friend has suddenly acquired a boyfriend; she fights with Juniper, who is 16, all the time. This part of the book is very well done: the characters are sometimes struck me as being a bit too adult, and they're all almost too intellectual and well-read, but they're all compelling and their interactions are acutely observed. There's not much of a plot, but at that age simply getting older provides enough of a narrative structure to keep things moving. The problem is that Dean shoehorns in a whole additional plot which is riddled with magic but doesn't make sense.
This part of the book revolves around Dominic Hardy, a handsome teenage boy who moves in next door and who all the sisters develop a crush on, but who is clearly a magical figure of some kind. We know from the beginning that his house appears virtually overnight and he doesn't have any parents, although he is capable of using magic to hide these facts. For about two-thirds of the book, he remains a moderately interesting mystery who simultaneously fulfills a useful role as a dangerous older boy, one who Gentian is, despite herself, attracted to. Even the fact that he only speaks in quotations and riddles adds to his appeal, as it sets him apart from other teenage boys and appeals to her intellectual side. Then in the last part of the book he suddenly takes on a much bigger role, but instead of resolving the mystery, Dean just piles on more questions that we never get answers to. For starters, why does nobody notice that the eerie words that the ouija board produces when Gentian and her friends use it are anagrams of Dominic's name? This happens not once but twice, and then is never referred to again. I suppose it's not immediately obvious, but I, the reader, figured it out: plus, Gentian knows that there's something strange about Dominic, since she is one of the only people who can remember that his house appeared essentially overnight (though why she is capable of remembering this is never explained either). Nor do we ever find out who or what Dominic is, or what he's trying to accomplish. Why does he want to build a time machine? Why does he need Gentian's help to build a time machine? Why does that involve trapping her in some kind of spell for months? Or, if the trapping is the point, why does he want to trap her? Why didn't her father, who it turns out knows something about magic (which is also left totally unexplained), try to intervene at all, or at least warn her? At the very end of the book he claims that this is something that Gentian had to work through by herself, which might make sense if it were simply a crush on an unsuitable older boy -- Gentian is intelligent and in many respects quite mature, and her parents clearly believe in a hands-off style of child-rearing -- but is crazy given that she has been essentially kidnapped by a powerful entity of a kind that she can't be prepared for because she doesn't believe that there is any such thing as magic.
In a way, I can see what Dean is trying to do: Gentian spends much of the book trying to come to terms with the fact that her friends are looking forward to not being children any more, and then adolescence hits her worse than any of them. But this could have been done just as easily without any magic, and it would have made a lot more sense.
This is an extremely weird book. On the one hand, it's a coming-of-age story, about three sisters (the titular plants are their names) having a more-or-less ideal -- well, it's ideal if you're a highly educated feminist -- childhood in 90s suburban Minnesota. The focus is mainly on 13-year-old Gentian, who is experiencing some typical problems for someone of that age. She's worried about the way her close childhood friend group seems to be drifting apart; she's having trouble understanding why her best friend has suddenly acquired a boyfriend; she fights with Juniper, who is 16, all the time. This part of the book is very well done: the characters are sometimes struck me as being a bit too adult, and they're all almost too intellectual and well-read, but they're all compelling and their interactions are acutely observed. There's not much of a plot, but at that age simply getting older provides enough of a narrative structure to keep things moving. The problem is that Dean shoehorns in a whole additional plot which is riddled with magic but doesn't make sense.
This part of the book revolves around Dominic Hardy, a handsome teenage boy who moves in next door and who all the sisters develop a crush on, but who is clearly a magical figure of some kind. We know from the beginning that his house appears virtually overnight and he doesn't have any parents, although he is capable of using magic to hide these facts. For about two-thirds of the book, he remains a moderately interesting mystery who simultaneously fulfills a useful role as a dangerous older boy, one who Gentian is, despite herself, attracted to. Even the fact that he only speaks in quotations and riddles adds to his appeal, as it sets him apart from other teenage boys and appeals to her intellectual side. Then in the last part of the book he suddenly takes on a much bigger role, but instead of resolving the mystery, Dean just piles on more questions that we never get answers to. For starters, why does nobody notice that the eerie words that the ouija board produces when Gentian and her friends use it are anagrams of Dominic's name? This happens not once but twice, and then is never referred to again. I suppose it's not immediately obvious, but I, the reader, figured it out: plus, Gentian knows that there's something strange about Dominic, since she is one of the only people who can remember that his house appeared essentially overnight (though why she is capable of remembering this is never explained either). Nor do we ever find out who or what Dominic is, or what he's trying to accomplish. Why does he want to build a time machine? Why does he need Gentian's help to build a time machine? Why does that involve trapping her in some kind of spell for months? Or, if the trapping is the point, why does he want to trap her? Why didn't her father, who it turns out knows something about magic (which is also left totally unexplained), try to intervene at all, or at least warn her? At the very end of the book he claims that this is something that Gentian had to work through by herself, which might make sense if it were simply a crush on an unsuitable older boy -- Gentian is intelligent and in many respects quite mature, and her parents clearly believe in a hands-off style of child-rearing -- but is crazy given that she has been essentially kidnapped by a powerful entity of a kind that she can't be prepared for because she doesn't believe that there is any such thing as magic.
In a way, I can see what Dean is trying to do: Gentian spends much of the book trying to come to terms with the fact that her friends are looking forward to not being children any more, and then adolescence hits her worse than any of them. But this could have been done just as easily without any magic, and it would have made a lot more sense.
November 19, 2008
This book is just too complex to save in my head until I'm done with rereading it. And I must say, I just didn't get vast chunks of it when I read it 10 years ago, because so much of the story (there is a story there, really!) is so subtle and so obscure that if one doesn't catch the meaning in the quotes and (literal) fortune cookies, then what is going on won't be obvious until the end.
Gentian lives a complex but healthy existence with her sisters and parents, studying astrononmy, going to an awesome unconventional high school, having friends over to spend the night, and generally grappling with the particular difficulties adolescence presents for someone intelligent and rational who resents their reason being interfered with by their emotions. (I am not that person at all, so she reads as an alien to me, but quite an interesting one.) A house is built next door; for Gentian it takes only a few weeks, but others insist that it took half the summer, and that's the first of many little holes in reality scattered throughout the book. Suddenly Gentian's telescope won't work -- it only shows her the house next door. The teenage boy who lives next door shows up; he's named Dominic, and is breathtakingly beautiful, and speaks almost entirely in quotations... because he is, literally, Satan (a Miltonic Satan, mind you, not a B-movie version), and Satan cannot create, he can only imitate or adapt.
So Dominic moves in next door and sets about ruining everything he can touch; by 1/3 of the way through the book he's already put the sisters even more at odds than usual, and has brought up the race card between Gentian & her friend Alma in an attempt to upset their relationship. Gentian's telescope only works when her friend Becky is present, so she's feeling part of her identity as an astronomer threatened by her inability to star-gaze. Mrs. Zimmerman, the only other person who realises how quickly the new house was built, identifies Dominic without realising it, saying that he spends each night "walking up and down, and to and fro" on the street in front of the house. Dominic hates _humans_, all humans; he's a Miltonian Satan, after all, and he can't forigve humanity for the grace they receive; there's a great scene in which he tells Gentian (in quotations, of course) how he hates the entire human species and she completely fails to get it.
Reading this book earlier today I felt like it was just so-so, but now that I'm putting it all down I think it might actually be amazing in its exploration of what real evil is and how it manifests. Gentian is sympathetic and yet she keeps making these tiny sacrifices of her self; she is enamoured with Dominic and so when Alma reveals the terrible things he was almost-saying (but not ever outright; not subtle enough that way) she is outraged and yet she doesn't want it to be true so she lets it go.
The remainder of the book develops in much the same way; Dominic subtly enthralls Gentian and both of her sisters, and finally puts them to work building a time machine for him in their attic. First Rosemary and then Juniper realise that Dominic is taking advantage of them and break away, leaving Gentian still obsessively working in the attic, unaware that she is losing months of her life in what seems to her to be an endless January. Even once she becomes aware of how much time she's lost, she continues working on the time machine, easily convinced by Dominic's argument that only by finishing it can she repair the damage she's done to her relationships and schoolwork. It isn't until Dominic demands the two objects most central to her identity -- her telescope, and a poem written by her best friend -- that she finally refuses him, and in doing so finally breaks his hold over her.
Despite all of the wonderful things in this book, I still find myself unsatisfied with the ending. Why didn't Gentian's friends intervene to help her? Why did her parents let her lose 10 months of her life to Dominic? The book suggests a combination of his time-magic and their belief that she has to solve her own problems, but this seems like a harsh way to treat one's 14-yr-old daughter. If Gentian was presented as having really learned something from being left alone to grapple with the consequences of her poor decisions I might be happier, but she's left resentful and confused, although relieved that her best friend hasn't given up on her. I really, really wanted another chapter or so of processing on her part, so I could see how she's been changed by all of this, and get some assurance that she's not permanently damaged. Without that resolution I find myself uncomfortable and sad, worried about Gentian's ability to reconnect with the ordinary world, and intensely angry with her parents for showing so little concern. I am still fond of the book, and glad I read it, but I'm not sure when I'll read it again; the ending is just too painful for me.
19 dec 2012: Just pulled it down to look for a quote, and ended up rereading bits. I think my real problem with the book is that there is neither catharsis nor eucatastrophe.
Gentian lives a complex but healthy existence with her sisters and parents, studying astrononmy, going to an awesome unconventional high school, having friends over to spend the night, and generally grappling with the particular difficulties adolescence presents for someone intelligent and rational who resents their reason being interfered with by their emotions. (I am not that person at all, so she reads as an alien to me, but quite an interesting one.) A house is built next door; for Gentian it takes only a few weeks, but others insist that it took half the summer, and that's the first of many little holes in reality scattered throughout the book. Suddenly Gentian's telescope won't work -- it only shows her the house next door. The teenage boy who lives next door shows up; he's named Dominic, and is breathtakingly beautiful, and speaks almost entirely in quotations... because he is, literally, Satan (a Miltonic Satan, mind you, not a B-movie version), and Satan cannot create, he can only imitate or adapt.
So Dominic moves in next door and sets about ruining everything he can touch; by 1/3 of the way through the book he's already put the sisters even more at odds than usual, and has brought up the race card between Gentian & her friend Alma in an attempt to upset their relationship. Gentian's telescope only works when her friend Becky is present, so she's feeling part of her identity as an astronomer threatened by her inability to star-gaze. Mrs. Zimmerman, the only other person who realises how quickly the new house was built, identifies Dominic without realising it, saying that he spends each night "walking up and down, and to and fro" on the street in front of the house. Dominic hates _humans_, all humans; he's a Miltonian Satan, after all, and he can't forigve humanity for the grace they receive; there's a great scene in which he tells Gentian (in quotations, of course) how he hates the entire human species and she completely fails to get it.
Reading this book earlier today I felt like it was just so-so, but now that I'm putting it all down I think it might actually be amazing in its exploration of what real evil is and how it manifests. Gentian is sympathetic and yet she keeps making these tiny sacrifices of her self; she is enamoured with Dominic and so when Alma reveals the terrible things he was almost-saying (but not ever outright; not subtle enough that way) she is outraged and yet she doesn't want it to be true so she lets it go.
The remainder of the book develops in much the same way; Dominic subtly enthralls Gentian and both of her sisters, and finally puts them to work building a time machine for him in their attic. First Rosemary and then Juniper realise that Dominic is taking advantage of them and break away, leaving Gentian still obsessively working in the attic, unaware that she is losing months of her life in what seems to her to be an endless January. Even once she becomes aware of how much time she's lost, she continues working on the time machine, easily convinced by Dominic's argument that only by finishing it can she repair the damage she's done to her relationships and schoolwork. It isn't until Dominic demands the two objects most central to her identity -- her telescope, and a poem written by her best friend -- that she finally refuses him, and in doing so finally breaks his hold over her.
Despite all of the wonderful things in this book, I still find myself unsatisfied with the ending. Why didn't Gentian's friends intervene to help her? Why did her parents let her lose 10 months of her life to Dominic? The book suggests a combination of his time-magic and their belief that she has to solve her own problems, but this seems like a harsh way to treat one's 14-yr-old daughter. If Gentian was presented as having really learned something from being left alone to grapple with the consequences of her poor decisions I might be happier, but she's left resentful and confused, although relieved that her best friend hasn't given up on her. I really, really wanted another chapter or so of processing on her part, so I could see how she's been changed by all of this, and get some assurance that she's not permanently damaged. Without that resolution I find myself uncomfortable and sad, worried about Gentian's ability to reconnect with the ordinary world, and intensely angry with her parents for showing so little concern. I am still fond of the book, and glad I read it, but I'm not sure when I'll read it again; the ending is just too painful for me.
19 dec 2012: Just pulled it down to look for a quote, and ended up rereading bits. I think my real problem with the book is that there is neither catharsis nor eucatastrophe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 9, 2026
warning, spoilers will abound in this review!
although it’s less of a review and more of a me having so many Thoughts about this book that I felt the urgent need to write them all down immediately.
anyway, if you don't want spoilers, this would be the place to stop reading.
having said that, I’m not sure that this is really the sort of book where it matters whether you know what’s coming. most of what happens beyond the introductory ‘this is what this world is like and why you should care about it’ chapters (incidentally, always my favourite part of any story) is fairly predictable. it doesn’t come as a surprise when Dominic starts to separate Gentian, quietly and subtly, from the people who love her. it doesn’t come as a surprise when he turns out to be Juniper’s boyfriend. it certainly doesn’t come as a surprise when everything gets really, properly, weird and scary, because we already know that Dominic is strange and terrifying and is going to fuck everything up.
it did come as a little bit of a surprise, at least to me, that Gentian was able to see through Dominic and break his power over her by answering his riddle before the time travel, at least the Big version of it that Dominic seemed to be aiming for, could happen. I’d half thought that Gentian might end up in lost in time with him forever, or that he’d make some huge terrible change to the world that could never be put back.
of course, he does still make a huge, terrible change to the world, but only Gentian’s world, and that comes as a tremendous relief, even as my heart hurt for Gentian herself.
you can read this book on a few different levels.
in one way, it’s a classic coming of age story. Gentian meets a boy, falls for him despite knowing, logically, that he’s supremely shitty, makes him her whole world without quite noticing until the very end that that’s what she’s done, finally realises he’s awful, and sends him packing, leaving her much sadder and a little wiser. it’s a lot of YA romances, though perhaps notable for the fact that Dominic cannot be fixed and there is no boy next door or equivalent for Gentian to realise was actually the Correct option all along. instead she must try to return to her family and friends a changed person.
it’s worth saying at this point, perhaps, that this book is a perfect failure as a reproduction of reality. magic aside, no thirteen or fourteen year old talks the way these ones do. few of them are as analytical of the people who surround them as Gentian is. I certainly wasn’t. but, of course, reproducing reality isn’t what Pamela Dean is trying to do. she adores references and quotations and literature and sees no reason why she shouldn’t indulge herself as she tells her story. neither do I. it’s a unique reading experience and a delightful one.
on another level, of course, this story is an exploration of riddle songs. Gentian’s family is made up of references and quotations, and riddle songs are an old, old tradition. A Cherry That has No Stone, Captain Wedderburn’s Courtship, and, of course, Child ballad 1, the folk song from which the book’s title and central story comes: Juniper, Gentle and Rosemary, or Riddles Wisely Expounded, or The Devil’s Nine Questions. Like Tam Lin by the same author, it’s a fairly literal, though modernised, retelling of the song. Gentian must answer the devil’s riddles and thus save herself from becoming his. and afterwards, as the song’s heroine needn’t do because the song ends with her triumph, learn how to begin living her own life again. In the song, the maiden is clever and witty enough to slip from the devil’s grasp, but while Gentian is certainly clever and has very sharp wits, she’s still only a thirteen/fourteen year old girl and this isn’t easy for her. I think Pamela Dean gives us a version of the song that explores the ramifications of having to fight the devil in ways that are both very enjoyable and very painful.
if you don’t know the song, the book, I think, gives you enough context to read it as a standard fantasy quest, in which our youthful heroine must first recognise and then defeat the villain who’s implanted himself suddenly into the midst of her life, which is a variation on the classic coming of age story, though, again, the quiet, rather bittersweet ending is a little bit of a twist. fighting evil doesn’t merely lead you to triumph and growing up, it inevitably changes you, and change is usually difficult and often sad.
I also couldn’t help but read this book as a meditation upon romance, and especially on heterosexual romance, which the book very much does not come out in favour of. as an aromantic myself, I found it very easy to read Gentian as aromantic. she has strong feelings about Dominic, but they’re a mess of hormones and indefinable attraction and confusion. she went into the story feeling highly dubious about the whole idea of romance and doesn’t escape it feeling any better about it.
even if you read Gentian as entirely alloromantic and hetero, her first foray into romance is a spectacular failure and she almost loses herself and her whole world completely. her journey is mirrored by that of her best friend Becky (who is spectacularly and beautifully autistic). Becky falls in love with a boy who is not the devil but, knowing what we do about Becky’s personality, seems entirely unsuited to her. we don’t find out what happened between them in the months Gentian is isolated from her friends, but I think it’s safe to assume they probably didn’t last very long.
Dominic is the biggest focus of romance in the book. he’s Juniper’s boyfriend and quickly endears himself to Rosemary, while Gentian’s feelings about him are confused but intense. All of them suffer for it. All of them, except perhaps Rosemary, probably ought to have known better than to want him in their lives. their attempts at heterosexual romance are an abject failure.
even most of the parents we see throughout the novel are dubiously successful at heterosexuality. none of the friends’ parents seem entirely functional or happy in their marriages. the only pairing that seems genuinely happy and healthy is that of Gentian’s own parents, and yet they completely fail their daughter. yes, her father attempts to protect her and her sisters with magic, and her mother attempts to teach her better, but she needed them to save her, and they didn’t, and she very nearly wasn’t able to save herself. in the world of this book, it seems that heterosexuality causes you to be a bad parent, a bad sibling, and a bad friend.
Becky is the only character who manages to both have a boyfriend and remain a good friend. perhaps her autism saves her, or perhaps this is fuel for my entirely unfounded theory that she is in fact bisexual. perhaps she’s simply the example against whom everyone else falls short. and still, her boyfriend doesn’t seem like a great person. he thinks women are lesser beings and that Becky is the exception, an attitude that I suspect will quickly grow old, so while Becky navigates romance and friendship expertly, her romance cannot be said to be a particularly desirable one. thus we land, inevitably for this book, squarely back on heterosexuality just isn’t that great.
while I’m talking, tangentially at least, about queerness, I have to shout out Erin, who knows exactly who she is, which is absolutely queer of gender in some way, genderfluid or transmasc, perhaps. good for her! she and Alma, the One Black Friend, are the two members of the friend group who are most obviously different from Gentian, and therefore the two most easily separated from her by Dominic’s horribly simple, believable, and insinuating lies. they aren’t vulnerable to Dominic himself, but they’re still hurt by his presence in Gentian’s life. I think there is hope that the friend group will survive, but they will all be changed by what’s happened.
fascinatingly, the friend group member least affected by Dominic is Steph. he’s the devil, or an aspect of the devil at least, and she is the most strongly Christian of all of them. perhaps it’s the fact that they both come from the same cultural tradition, even if they’re on opposite sides of it, that makes them somehow resonate with each other. Steph seems immune to Dominic’s influence, doesn’t even seem to notice it, is neither upset by him nor attracted to him, as everyone else is, and Dominic appears not to attempt to lie to her or separate her from Gentian. thus, it’s Steph, as Gentian becomes more isolated but before she’s completely in Dominic’s domain, who keeps the pressure on Gentian to keep making the effort to remain part of the friend group. it may well be due to Steph that the friends will be willing to forgive Gentian for her months long abandonment.
Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin will always be my favourite of her books, I think, but I’ll definitely want to reread this one, perhaps buy a physical copy of it so that I can annotate it. It’s one of those books that on the surface is a simple coming of age story, but has so much going on underneath that surface that to reduce it to that seems a little insulting. it reminds me of Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones in that way: a book that I’ve read half a dozen times but feels different and takes me deeper beneath the surface every time I read it.
anyway. yeah. just needed to get all those thoughts out of my brain, apparently. this is a good book. read it!
although it’s less of a review and more of a me having so many Thoughts about this book that I felt the urgent need to write them all down immediately.
anyway, if you don't want spoilers, this would be the place to stop reading.
having said that, I’m not sure that this is really the sort of book where it matters whether you know what’s coming. most of what happens beyond the introductory ‘this is what this world is like and why you should care about it’ chapters (incidentally, always my favourite part of any story) is fairly predictable. it doesn’t come as a surprise when Dominic starts to separate Gentian, quietly and subtly, from the people who love her. it doesn’t come as a surprise when he turns out to be Juniper’s boyfriend. it certainly doesn’t come as a surprise when everything gets really, properly, weird and scary, because we already know that Dominic is strange and terrifying and is going to fuck everything up.
it did come as a little bit of a surprise, at least to me, that Gentian was able to see through Dominic and break his power over her by answering his riddle before the time travel, at least the Big version of it that Dominic seemed to be aiming for, could happen. I’d half thought that Gentian might end up in lost in time with him forever, or that he’d make some huge terrible change to the world that could never be put back.
of course, he does still make a huge, terrible change to the world, but only Gentian’s world, and that comes as a tremendous relief, even as my heart hurt for Gentian herself.
you can read this book on a few different levels.
in one way, it’s a classic coming of age story. Gentian meets a boy, falls for him despite knowing, logically, that he’s supremely shitty, makes him her whole world without quite noticing until the very end that that’s what she’s done, finally realises he’s awful, and sends him packing, leaving her much sadder and a little wiser. it’s a lot of YA romances, though perhaps notable for the fact that Dominic cannot be fixed and there is no boy next door or equivalent for Gentian to realise was actually the Correct option all along. instead she must try to return to her family and friends a changed person.
it’s worth saying at this point, perhaps, that this book is a perfect failure as a reproduction of reality. magic aside, no thirteen or fourteen year old talks the way these ones do. few of them are as analytical of the people who surround them as Gentian is. I certainly wasn’t. but, of course, reproducing reality isn’t what Pamela Dean is trying to do. she adores references and quotations and literature and sees no reason why she shouldn’t indulge herself as she tells her story. neither do I. it’s a unique reading experience and a delightful one.
on another level, of course, this story is an exploration of riddle songs. Gentian’s family is made up of references and quotations, and riddle songs are an old, old tradition. A Cherry That has No Stone, Captain Wedderburn’s Courtship, and, of course, Child ballad 1, the folk song from which the book’s title and central story comes: Juniper, Gentle and Rosemary, or Riddles Wisely Expounded, or The Devil’s Nine Questions. Like Tam Lin by the same author, it’s a fairly literal, though modernised, retelling of the song. Gentian must answer the devil’s riddles and thus save herself from becoming his. and afterwards, as the song’s heroine needn’t do because the song ends with her triumph, learn how to begin living her own life again. In the song, the maiden is clever and witty enough to slip from the devil’s grasp, but while Gentian is certainly clever and has very sharp wits, she’s still only a thirteen/fourteen year old girl and this isn’t easy for her. I think Pamela Dean gives us a version of the song that explores the ramifications of having to fight the devil in ways that are both very enjoyable and very painful.
if you don’t know the song, the book, I think, gives you enough context to read it as a standard fantasy quest, in which our youthful heroine must first recognise and then defeat the villain who’s implanted himself suddenly into the midst of her life, which is a variation on the classic coming of age story, though, again, the quiet, rather bittersweet ending is a little bit of a twist. fighting evil doesn’t merely lead you to triumph and growing up, it inevitably changes you, and change is usually difficult and often sad.
I also couldn’t help but read this book as a meditation upon romance, and especially on heterosexual romance, which the book very much does not come out in favour of. as an aromantic myself, I found it very easy to read Gentian as aromantic. she has strong feelings about Dominic, but they’re a mess of hormones and indefinable attraction and confusion. she went into the story feeling highly dubious about the whole idea of romance and doesn’t escape it feeling any better about it.
even if you read Gentian as entirely alloromantic and hetero, her first foray into romance is a spectacular failure and she almost loses herself and her whole world completely. her journey is mirrored by that of her best friend Becky (who is spectacularly and beautifully autistic). Becky falls in love with a boy who is not the devil but, knowing what we do about Becky’s personality, seems entirely unsuited to her. we don’t find out what happened between them in the months Gentian is isolated from her friends, but I think it’s safe to assume they probably didn’t last very long.
Dominic is the biggest focus of romance in the book. he’s Juniper’s boyfriend and quickly endears himself to Rosemary, while Gentian’s feelings about him are confused but intense. All of them suffer for it. All of them, except perhaps Rosemary, probably ought to have known better than to want him in their lives. their attempts at heterosexual romance are an abject failure.
even most of the parents we see throughout the novel are dubiously successful at heterosexuality. none of the friends’ parents seem entirely functional or happy in their marriages. the only pairing that seems genuinely happy and healthy is that of Gentian’s own parents, and yet they completely fail their daughter. yes, her father attempts to protect her and her sisters with magic, and her mother attempts to teach her better, but she needed them to save her, and they didn’t, and she very nearly wasn’t able to save herself. in the world of this book, it seems that heterosexuality causes you to be a bad parent, a bad sibling, and a bad friend.
Becky is the only character who manages to both have a boyfriend and remain a good friend. perhaps her autism saves her, or perhaps this is fuel for my entirely unfounded theory that she is in fact bisexual. perhaps she’s simply the example against whom everyone else falls short. and still, her boyfriend doesn’t seem like a great person. he thinks women are lesser beings and that Becky is the exception, an attitude that I suspect will quickly grow old, so while Becky navigates romance and friendship expertly, her romance cannot be said to be a particularly desirable one. thus we land, inevitably for this book, squarely back on heterosexuality just isn’t that great.
while I’m talking, tangentially at least, about queerness, I have to shout out Erin, who knows exactly who she is, which is absolutely queer of gender in some way, genderfluid or transmasc, perhaps. good for her! she and Alma, the One Black Friend, are the two members of the friend group who are most obviously different from Gentian, and therefore the two most easily separated from her by Dominic’s horribly simple, believable, and insinuating lies. they aren’t vulnerable to Dominic himself, but they’re still hurt by his presence in Gentian’s life. I think there is hope that the friend group will survive, but they will all be changed by what’s happened.
fascinatingly, the friend group member least affected by Dominic is Steph. he’s the devil, or an aspect of the devil at least, and she is the most strongly Christian of all of them. perhaps it’s the fact that they both come from the same cultural tradition, even if they’re on opposite sides of it, that makes them somehow resonate with each other. Steph seems immune to Dominic’s influence, doesn’t even seem to notice it, is neither upset by him nor attracted to him, as everyone else is, and Dominic appears not to attempt to lie to her or separate her from Gentian. thus, it’s Steph, as Gentian becomes more isolated but before she’s completely in Dominic’s domain, who keeps the pressure on Gentian to keep making the effort to remain part of the friend group. it may well be due to Steph that the friends will be willing to forgive Gentian for her months long abandonment.
Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin will always be my favourite of her books, I think, but I’ll definitely want to reread this one, perhaps buy a physical copy of it so that I can annotate it. It’s one of those books that on the surface is a simple coming of age story, but has so much going on underneath that surface that to reduce it to that seems a little insulting. it reminds me of Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones in that way: a book that I’ve read half a dozen times but feels different and takes me deeper beneath the surface every time I read it.
anyway. yeah. just needed to get all those thoughts out of my brain, apparently. this is a good book. read it!
maybe-read-sometime
February 25, 2011Some years ago I saw a copy of this book in a bookstore, looked at it, and thought, "Nah, it doesn't look interesting" or "Maybe later" or something like that. And later never really happened and the book quietly withered away, at least as the likelihood of finding it in bookstores is concerned.
But now, having a more intense appreciation of Pamela Dean, I decided to snag this book from the library. I will admit to peeking at some reviews on Goodreads beforehand. At least one of them said the teenagers are unrealistic, and I have to agree that they kind of are (particularly the viewpoint character) when it comes to their dialogue. The references to Them! (old movie about giant ants) made me smile, though. Also, it feels like there was a lot of stuff and it took forever to get to the meat of the plot (which, yes, I know is what a lot of people say about Tam Lin).
Also I'm not sure the plot is ultimately that ... plotty? If there really is much meat to it? Like Tam Lin, this is based on one of the ballads that Francis James Child recorded. But I don't think it holds up as well. And I think that the children from the The Secret Country trilogy carry off the "surprisingly literate children" thing much better than do the ones here.
Flipping ahead, I did see one creepy part, spoken by her father: "I guess this is what comes of trying to protect you from ordinary garden-variety sexuality. "
Amusingly, the heroine's parents went to Blackstock, the half-fictional college where Tam Lin took place. I might take another look at this later, to see if there are any other references to it. (But I suspect that was the only one.)
But now, having a more intense appreciation of Pamela Dean, I decided to snag this book from the library. I will admit to peeking at some reviews on Goodreads beforehand. At least one of them said the teenagers are unrealistic, and I have to agree that they kind of are (particularly the viewpoint character) when it comes to their dialogue. The references to Them! (old movie about giant ants) made me smile, though. Also, it feels like there was a lot of stuff and it took forever to get to the meat of the plot (which, yes, I know is what a lot of people say about Tam Lin).
Also I'm not sure the plot is ultimately that ... plotty? If there really is much meat to it? Like Tam Lin, this is based on one of the ballads that Francis James Child recorded. But I don't think it holds up as well. And I think that the children from the The Secret Country trilogy carry off the "surprisingly literate children" thing much better than do the ones here.
Flipping ahead, I did see one creepy part, spoken by her father: "I guess this is what comes of trying to protect you from ordinary garden-variety sexuality. "
Amusingly, the heroine's parents went to Blackstock, the half-fictional college where Tam Lin took place. I might take another look at this later, to see if there are any other references to it. (But I suspect that was the only one.)
August 18, 2008
Pamela Dean, I realized, reminds me a lot Madeleine L'Engle . . . well, that needs some explanation. Her books make me feel like L'Engle's books do, it's hard to explain, they make me want to think about things and have interesting conversations about the universe and our place in it with friends and family in a kitchen while drinking cocoa, and they really make me talk like her characters, which is a little unfortunate. The Meriweathers, the main family in this book, remind me a lot of the Austens, precocious and opinionated children, wise and funny parents, and lots of connectedness--no feeling of impending family schism you find in a lot of young adult novels.
This story is based on an old ballad called "Riddles Wisely Expounded" but it really doesn't get around to that for a long time. Mostly it's about a girl named Gentian Meriweather who wants to be an astronomer, and all the stuff she looks at through her telescope, all the things she thinks about on the eve of adolescence, and the conversations she has with her close friends. It's mostly just a very comfortable novel, with a strange and surprising, but still good, ending to it.
Like Tam Lin this novel was very detailed and included an inordinate amount of quotations, but it made up for some things in Tam Lin, too. For one thing it takes a more reasonable view of modern poetry and anthropology instead of writing them off entirely. I don't know if that means the main characters are not merely spouting the views of the author, or if the views of the author changed between books. This book is also set in the same universe as Tam Lin, it seems, since Gentian's parents went to the same college that is the setting for Tam Lin, although that is a completely incidental detail. I liked that the author dropped it in there, though, it made me feel a happy connectedness.
This story is based on an old ballad called "Riddles Wisely Expounded" but it really doesn't get around to that for a long time. Mostly it's about a girl named Gentian Meriweather who wants to be an astronomer, and all the stuff she looks at through her telescope, all the things she thinks about on the eve of adolescence, and the conversations she has with her close friends. It's mostly just a very comfortable novel, with a strange and surprising, but still good, ending to it.
Like Tam Lin this novel was very detailed and included an inordinate amount of quotations, but it made up for some things in Tam Lin, too. For one thing it takes a more reasonable view of modern poetry and anthropology instead of writing them off entirely. I don't know if that means the main characters are not merely spouting the views of the author, or if the views of the author changed between books. This book is also set in the same universe as Tam Lin, it seems, since Gentian's parents went to the same college that is the setting for Tam Lin, although that is a completely incidental detail. I liked that the author dropped it in there, though, it made me feel a happy connectedness.
June 6, 2019
from my VOYA review 1998
"More a philosophical ponderance than a fantasy, the book's outright supernatural elements appear very late in the story. The devilish neighbor lurks, romantically promising some kind of despicable and/or amorous action. Intelligent and patient readers who enjoy the witty repartee will let the suspense lead them to its satisfying end. Some might criticize the Konigsburg-esque brilliant characters as unrealistic, but if ultra-bright girls like this don't really exist, this odd and wonderful book and others like it may just help to create some."
"More a philosophical ponderance than a fantasy, the book's outright supernatural elements appear very late in the story. The devilish neighbor lurks, romantically promising some kind of despicable and/or amorous action. Intelligent and patient readers who enjoy the witty repartee will let the suspense lead them to its satisfying end. Some might criticize the Konigsburg-esque brilliant characters as unrealistic, but if ultra-bright girls like this don't really exist, this odd and wonderful book and others like it may just help to create some."
July 9, 2017
I found this book more annoying than anything. It was too mundane for fantasy, and too fantastic for good fiction. I certainly can't imagine recommending it to any young person that I know, nor would I consider it for most adults. Sorry. Just not my cup of tea, obviously.
February 5, 2009
a hot mess.
April 21, 2016
Loses points for density and a distinct nonending, but I enjoyed it much better than any of Dean's other books.
Read
May 23, 2022I get it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
October 16, 2024
I'm a little torn on where to rate this book, I think because there's a small gap between my enjoyment level during parts of the story and what I think the book is trying to do.
Let me just get my negative comments out of the way: I found this story to be a little slow at times. There's not a ton of plot, and when we're kind of meandering around and getting inundated with literary references and astronomical facts, I would find myself really wanting to skim through to the next chapter. I also think the main conceit feels a little superfluous? I understand that it "needed" to be there for the purpose of the retelling of this Scottish ballad, but I do wonder if the story would function just fine without it. Perhaps I'll have a more specific note in the spoilers section.
I think that this is a story that really rewards you getting comfy and sitting with it for a bit. The slower pacing gives you ample time to spend with the characters and feeds into that autumn/winter vibe. And I really loved the characters, they seemed like real people and the relationship dynamics between everyone felt so realistic and made me nostalgic for my own childhood. I particularly liked the depictions of the family fights, partially because they often came with these little nods towards the parents' relationship, which was quietly cute and loving and romantic.
The other thing that I just really loved was the way Pamela Dean wrote and captured childhood and coming-of-age (I'm nothing if not consistent). I love the conflicting emotions with these young characters who have mapped out their entire identities at the ripe age of 13-14, and yet they're so confused as to why their friendships are changing as they're growing up and their preferences are changing and they're becoming interested in boys (yuck). They even call it out: "Everything's changing so much. I don't even know how tall I am or what size bra I wear, and when I had that cold last week I got out a Goosebumps book to read, and it was so bad I wondered if somebody had taken the inside away and substituted a different one."
Now, this story is mainly about a group of young girls growing up in the early 1990s, so unfortunately I couldn't totally relate to their group dynamic, but it still gave me a lot of nostalgia, and I think if you can relate to those things, it would REALLY be a comfort read for you. Bonus points if you can appreciate literary references (especially Shakespeare) and astronomy; those things are beyond my paltry biology education.
One other thing that I wanted to point out was that I liked how feminism was incorporated in the girls' characters. It's reflected in their philosophies, their heroes, their clothes, how they think about boys, and not only that, but each girl has a slightly different idea of what feminism should mean.
Okay, now for a few thoughts with spoilers:
Let me just get my negative comments out of the way: I found this story to be a little slow at times. There's not a ton of plot, and when we're kind of meandering around and getting inundated with literary references and astronomical facts, I would find myself really wanting to skim through to the next chapter. I also think the main conceit feels a little superfluous? I understand that it "needed" to be there for the purpose of the retelling of this Scottish ballad, but I do wonder if the story would function just fine without it. Perhaps I'll have a more specific note in the spoilers section.
I think that this is a story that really rewards you getting comfy and sitting with it for a bit. The slower pacing gives you ample time to spend with the characters and feeds into that autumn/winter vibe. And I really loved the characters, they seemed like real people and the relationship dynamics between everyone felt so realistic and made me nostalgic for my own childhood. I particularly liked the depictions of the family fights, partially because they often came with these little nods towards the parents' relationship, which was quietly cute and loving and romantic.
The other thing that I just really loved was the way Pamela Dean wrote and captured childhood and coming-of-age (I'm nothing if not consistent). I love the conflicting emotions with these young characters who have mapped out their entire identities at the ripe age of 13-14, and yet they're so confused as to why their friendships are changing as they're growing up and their preferences are changing and they're becoming interested in boys (yuck). They even call it out: "Everything's changing so much. I don't even know how tall I am or what size bra I wear, and when I had that cold last week I got out a Goosebumps book to read, and it was so bad I wondered if somebody had taken the inside away and substituted a different one."
Now, this story is mainly about a group of young girls growing up in the early 1990s, so unfortunately I couldn't totally relate to their group dynamic, but it still gave me a lot of nostalgia, and I think if you can relate to those things, it would REALLY be a comfort read for you. Bonus points if you can appreciate literary references (especially Shakespeare) and astronomy; those things are beyond my paltry biology education.
One other thing that I wanted to point out was that I liked how feminism was incorporated in the girls' characters. It's reflected in their philosophies, their heroes, their clothes, how they think about boys, and not only that, but each girl has a slightly different idea of what feminism should mean.
Okay, now for a few thoughts with spoilers:
December 25, 2019
This was so frustrating. At first I though this was the perfect book to describe what it felt like to be a girl in the early teens, even if the characters were well-read and articulate well past the point of realism. The intensity of interests and friendships, the moodiness, the growing self-consciousness, the tension between the desire for autonomy and the expectation of support and protection, the discomfort and fascination of emerging sexuality, the growing understanding of how gender roles will affect you no matter what kind of woman you aspire to be - all this was so perfectly captured I wanted to walk around making people read it.
But then, the author seems to realise she has almost expended her publisher’s word count on a character study and shoehorns the entire plot into the last two chapters even though it doesn’t fit the rest of the book very well at all. I get the feeling something went out of kilter with the writing of this book. Dean must have realised she wasn’t going to make a deadline or a word count and the book was published with an ending that didn’t fit at all. These flaws are exactly the same as the flaws of Dean’s earlier novel, Tam Lin (the strong points are also very similar - wonderful characterisation of a certain kind of young woman, the delight of reading and learning ), but unfortunately magnified past overlooking. It’s so sad and such a waste of a wonderful beginning. Still, I give it 4 stars for being two chapters away from being the perfect YA book.
But then, the author seems to realise she has almost expended her publisher’s word count on a character study and shoehorns the entire plot into the last two chapters even though it doesn’t fit the rest of the book very well at all. I get the feeling something went out of kilter with the writing of this book. Dean must have realised she wasn’t going to make a deadline or a word count and the book was published with an ending that didn’t fit at all. These flaws are exactly the same as the flaws of Dean’s earlier novel, Tam Lin (the strong points are also very similar - wonderful characterisation of a certain kind of young woman, the delight of reading and learning ), but unfortunately magnified past overlooking. It’s so sad and such a waste of a wonderful beginning. Still, I give it 4 stars for being two chapters away from being the perfect YA book.
September 13, 2017
When a new house suddenly goes up in the vacant lot next door, Gentian and her sisters Juniper and Rosemary are naturally intrigued. Though the three are initially excited that something interesting is happening in their Minneapolis neighborhood, they're gradually disillusioned as the only person to emerge from the house is Dominic, a weirdly off-putting teenage boy, who chooses to speak only in literary quotes. To make matters worse, Gentian's treasured attic telescope begins to malfunction, displaying images of the house next door rather than the heavens.
There were a number of things that irritated me about this book. Foremost, though they attend a "progressive" school and Gentian's parents are admittedly somewhat offbeat, the profound behavior, interests, internal monologues, and conversations of this collection of kids in their early teens require a serious suspension of disbelief. Also disorienting was the author's writing style and choice of phrase, which felt foreign (British?) though the author, like me, hails from Minnesota (to be fair, perhaps she isn't a native). Ultimately, very little of interest occurred until the final 50 pages of the story, and even then the "twist" ending was weird, vague and unsatisfactory.
Interestingly, I experienced a case of synchronicity or what I've decided to call Literary Baader-Meinhof Phenomena while reading this book: Though published in 1998, on page 187 Gentian makes a reference to the 2017 solar eclipse, and I just so happened to read that page just four days after observing the 2017 eclipse myself.
There were a number of things that irritated me about this book. Foremost, though they attend a "progressive" school and Gentian's parents are admittedly somewhat offbeat, the profound behavior, interests, internal monologues, and conversations of this collection of kids in their early teens require a serious suspension of disbelief. Also disorienting was the author's writing style and choice of phrase, which felt foreign (British?) though the author, like me, hails from Minnesota (to be fair, perhaps she isn't a native). Ultimately, very little of interest occurred until the final 50 pages of the story, and even then the "twist" ending was weird, vague and unsatisfactory.
Interestingly, I experienced a case of synchronicity or what I've decided to call Literary Baader-Meinhof Phenomena while reading this book: Though published in 1998, on page 187 Gentian makes a reference to the 2017 solar eclipse, and I just so happened to read that page just four days after observing the 2017 eclipse myself.
September 5, 2022
I honestly don't know what I just read. I was confused half the time, although full time by the ending chapters....
This book is much more than a story of a 14-year-old astronomer-to be who accepts to host in her attic a mysterious boy who speaks in quoted and riddles and wants to build a time machine in 1993.
This books is full of astronomy wordly paraphernalia, quotes and riddles from literature, the human experience of having two sisters, and weird fun friend group, magic and the devil?!?!?!
Make that make sense, because I couldn't.....
I enjoyed it, but I'm positively confused. I didn't get any message?
Was it," no one will save you, and that's why you have to save yourself "
I'm not sure....
Anyway, I'm happy I finished it ... I have to many books I have started but not finished, but I'm working on that now ... Having too many books half-read may have or may not have send my mind into emotional stagnation.
Anyways my favourite quotes:
"But Junie got away with saying many awful things because she had red hair and people liked to joked about her temper" - Chpt. 1
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" - Chpt. 11
"He feared that many that smiled had in their hearts millions of mischiefs" - Chpt. 16
"The revelation of multiplicity in unity interested her deeply" - Chpt. 17
" 'I told you he was a gentleman,' said their father
'If you mean he abides by a strict set of arbitrary rules of no use to him or anybody else, you're right,' said their mother." - Chpt. 20
This book is much more than a story of a 14-year-old astronomer-to be who accepts to host in her attic a mysterious boy who speaks in quoted and riddles and wants to build a time machine in 1993.
This books is full of astronomy wordly paraphernalia, quotes and riddles from literature, the human experience of having two sisters, and weird fun friend group, magic and the devil?!?!?!
Make that make sense, because I couldn't.....
I enjoyed it, but I'm positively confused. I didn't get any message?
Was it," no one will save you, and that's why you have to save yourself "
I'm not sure....
Anyway, I'm happy I finished it ... I have to many books I have started but not finished, but I'm working on that now ... Having too many books half-read may have or may not have send my mind into emotional stagnation.
Anyways my favourite quotes:
"But Junie got away with saying many awful things because she had red hair and people liked to joked about her temper" - Chpt. 1
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" - Chpt. 11
"He feared that many that smiled had in their hearts millions of mischiefs" - Chpt. 16
"The revelation of multiplicity in unity interested her deeply" - Chpt. 17
" 'I told you he was a gentleman,' said their father
'If you mean he abides by a strict set of arbitrary rules of no use to him or anybody else, you're right,' said their mother." - Chpt. 20
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