Tamsin

Wow. Wow. Just, wow. This book is really a good one, I'd reccomend it to people definitely 12 or up (though it never would've stopped me). This book reads like it's fast paced, and it's only when you look at the size of the text, etc., that you notice how long it is. It's about the protagonist, Jenny, moving to England, and having to face many things, among them her decidedly sulky attitude (partly because of the 6-month loss of her dear, dear friend, Mister Cat, in quarantine). The other part of it is her house. It is HUGE, set on about a hundred (or, at least seventy) acres, with three floors, huge rooms... a real seventeenth-century 'manor'. But, it has not been cared for in a long time, and it seems to practically resist electricity. Soon Jenny meets Tamsin, a ghost who died when she was twenty and can't remember why she is still stuck on earth. It's really hard to put down. Amazingly, the character descriptions and personalities are right on target. I could perfectly imagine the way every person would act in a real situation, probably because the atmosphere seems so much like real life. Five stars and a round of applause for Peter S. Beagle!

Peter S. Beagle is in fine form again and has produced a wonderful Young Adult novel, quite suitable for us older adults who still dream and respect elder thickets. Tamsin belongs on the shelf next to Susan Cooper and Madeleine L'Engle, perhaps a little closer to the adult section because of the tolerance needed for his protagonist's initial 13-year old self-centered whine. She matures as the story unfolds, her growing emotional maturity driving events as the events force her maturity. Beagle has thought this out well; by the end, Jenny Gluckstein has become morally worthy of riding the Pooka after the Wild Hunt and getting help from a Great Old One to save a friend and bring closure to a 300 year old atrocity. She's a refreshingly tough kid with a good heart, neither bland nor shrinking. Her stubborn courage involves her, not her mere presence in a place of magic; she is consequently an admirable participant and actor instead of a passive observer. Five stars should be five cheers!

The very first fantasy book I ever read was "The Last Unicorn". I still have fond memories of that book, but compared to Beagle's writing style of today it was crude. Over the years he has refined his skills. "Tamsin" is wonderful. That he can write a story from the perspective of a young girl, in a completely believable fashion, shows in itself how skillful he is. The young heroine is a unique person, but full of many of the same insecurities that most of us have experienced during our teens. The story grows slowly, drawing the reader in, allowing the absurd to seem perfectly reasonable. A truly memorable tale. This is worth getting in hardcover.

Beagle brought me to a place I didn't ever want to leave. Then he created a family I sincerely missed after I turned the last page, and that's only the people who were alive! This story gave me chills, it was so absorbing, and his matter-of-fact descriptions of fey beasties makes me want to believe. I wish with all my heart that I had read this when I was in eighth or ninth grade, when the magic of Beagle's writing would have transported me for days. This is the first Peter Beagle book I ever read, and let me tell you, don't get between me and his books at the library...

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Peter Beagle is one of the best writers in the world. If you read fantasy, you've certainly read his novel "The Last Unicorn," voted one of the five best fantasy novels of all time. It's always a treat when he gifts us with a new story, which isn't often. In "Tamsin," he tries out a new style, very unlike anything he's written before. It's a twist on the classic ghost story, written from the viewpoint of a headstrong, 14-year old Bronx-raised girl who's trying to come to terms with her mother's remarriage, and with their new home: a run-down, 300-year old manor in the English countryside. If that wasn't bad enough, it turns out that the huge old house and farm that her family's trying to renovate are positively bustling with supernatural activity. Cold drafts, distant voices, boggarts in the kitchen, and things that go bump in the night. This supernatural world takes on an entirely new aspect for Jenny, however, when she discovers Tamsin, the ghost of a 19-year old girl who lived and "stopped," as she puts it, 300 years ago in the manor when it was first built. Tamsin is beautiful, mysterious and compelling, but as their friendship grows, Jenny is drawn deeper and deeper into the strange world of the "old country," and into deadly peril.This is a great book for young and old alike. It's very compelling; you won't be able to put it down until the very end. Like most of Peter's books, the story runs the whole emotional range, from funny to sad to terrifying to joyous. And throughout, there's always the mystery and secret of Tamsin, unfolding piece by piece in Peter's Beagle's truly exhilarating, masterful, fairy-tale like style.