Some Reviewing Part 2: Tam Lin

Dear Reader,

Lately I've been reading a lot of long poems and a lot about narrative poetry, ballads in particular. You see, for some years now, I've wanted to write my own epic/ballad; a sort of challenge to myself, though it had been a vague idea of something that I would do, some time in the future. But now I've finally got the story that I want tell through verse. I've got the characters, the setting, the plot and we can't forget the "bad guys". But, like any good story, before I actually start writing the epic/ballad, I need to do a bit of research. In this case, about form and structure of specific narrative poems.

And that, my dear reader, is how I stumbled across the 16th Century Scottish-borderland ballad, "Tam Lin". But as it turns out, a popular fiction writer, Pamela Dean, has written a modern re-telling of this old ballad. So of course I jumped at the chance of reading it.

It started off all well and good and interesting. However, for the first three quarters of the book, it read less like a modern re-telling of an old folklore ballad and more like the author's account of university life. And though I don't mind reading the later and greatly enjoyed her poetic language and discussion of great literary writers and their works (espeacially her take on Hamlet); more often than not, I found myself wondering when the magic and faeries would come in. At one point I became quite hopeless in my search for a spark between the two main characters, Tam Lin/Thomas Lane and Janet, i.e. the beginning of the story from the folk tale. And it is precisely because of this delay that some of her rambling descriptive pieces, though linguistically beautiful, became a bit of a nuisance to read. 

Nevertheless, it wasn't until after page 266 (more than half way through) that I began to spot some overt hints to the actual story of the ballad. (But when it truly began, the whole thing was resolved in less than five pages - make of that what you will.) So "all's well that ends well", right?

One thing's for sure, this book has definately got me interested in literature-that's-more--intellectually-challenging again, which is a bit of a move from quick-enjoyable-fictional-reads-that-don't-require-much-brain-power that I had been reading lately. But on the hole, though the characters didn't make a lasting impression on my heart, I still found it to be an intellectual pleasure to read, and would probably find myself revisiting it sometime in the near future.

As for my own epic/ballad, I'll keep you posted on any developments.

Nida

P.S. - sorry no video today. Maybe next time, if any thing significant pops up.