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Nov. 2nd, 2012 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsToday I reread Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard!
(I got through most of it while waiting for the bus to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan, which should tell you what you need to know about NYC public transit right now.)
BUT IT WAS OKAY BECAUSE I REALLY LOVE THE PERILOUS GARD. This was an incredibly formative book for me. It's a Tudor-era take on Tam Lin, starring sensible Kate Sutton, whose sister has accidentally pissed off Queen Mary and gotten Kate banished to a mysterious manor inhabited by a nice middle-aged knight and his younger brother, Emo Lord Drama King Christopher Heron.
CHRISTOPHER HERON: I don't really want to talk to you, but since you are here, and I enoy self-flagellation, let me tell you all about my terrible self and that time I destroyed everything I loved so you understand what an awful person I am!
KATE SUTTON: Well, that was an interesting story, but I have to say the geography of it doesn't make any sense.
CHRISTOPHER HERON: . . . you just heard me bare my WHOLE ANGSTY SOUL to you, and you are asking me about geography?
KATE SUTTON: It's relevant!
CHRISTOPHER HERON: Clearly there is no talking to you! I am off to brood in my leper's cave on a cold bed of stone. FOREVER.
KATE SUTTON: Oh yes, that's extremely productive.
Basically: Kate Sutton has no TIME for your manpain. KATE SUTTON IS THE GREATEST.
And this book is the greatest; it has all the sense of the eerie, the strange and the numinous that you could want from a story about the teind and the Fair Folk and the mysterious beauty underground, but at its heart it's very much about the things that matter because they're real, and wonderful because they're real. Kate is a heroine who saves the day -- and it's not a spoiler to tell you that she's a heroine who saves the day; after all, this is a Tam Lin story -- because she values reality more than fantasy, and control over her own mind more than her dreams. She's a heroine because, when you're building a fantasy manor, she's the one who will point out that building an extra door wherever you feel like it is going to get awfully pricey.
(To be fair, I also love Christopher, with his drama king flair and his secret passion for DRAINS AND DITCHING.)
I have mentioned I think that this book was incredibly formative for me. The legend of Tam Lin, in general, was incredibly formative for me; I spent a lot of my childhood collecting retellings, and there was a time when I could recite the whole ballad from memory, or at least a version of the whole ballad, though I think that time has possibly passed. And it's not like you needed to search for an origin of my thing for ladies saying "hey, don't worry, distressed dude in peril, I got this one," because that is just objectively awesome, but if you were to go looking, you'd probably find it here.
Which means it is time for a poll that I can't actually vote in! GREATEST TAM LIN. TAM LINS BATTLE TO THE DEATH. GO.
(I got through most of it while waiting for the bus to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan, which should tell you what you need to know about NYC public transit right now.)
BUT IT WAS OKAY BECAUSE I REALLY LOVE THE PERILOUS GARD. This was an incredibly formative book for me. It's a Tudor-era take on Tam Lin, starring sensible Kate Sutton, whose sister has accidentally pissed off Queen Mary and gotten Kate banished to a mysterious manor inhabited by a nice middle-aged knight and his younger brother, Emo Lord Drama King Christopher Heron.
CHRISTOPHER HERON: I don't really want to talk to you, but since you are here, and I enoy self-flagellation, let me tell you all about my terrible self and that time I destroyed everything I loved so you understand what an awful person I am!
KATE SUTTON: Well, that was an interesting story, but I have to say the geography of it doesn't make any sense.
CHRISTOPHER HERON: . . . you just heard me bare my WHOLE ANGSTY SOUL to you, and you are asking me about geography?
KATE SUTTON: It's relevant!
CHRISTOPHER HERON: Clearly there is no talking to you! I am off to brood in my leper's cave on a cold bed of stone. FOREVER.
KATE SUTTON: Oh yes, that's extremely productive.
Basically: Kate Sutton has no TIME for your manpain. KATE SUTTON IS THE GREATEST.
And this book is the greatest; it has all the sense of the eerie, the strange and the numinous that you could want from a story about the teind and the Fair Folk and the mysterious beauty underground, but at its heart it's very much about the things that matter because they're real, and wonderful because they're real. Kate is a heroine who saves the day -- and it's not a spoiler to tell you that she's a heroine who saves the day; after all, this is a Tam Lin story -- because she values reality more than fantasy, and control over her own mind more than her dreams. She's a heroine because, when you're building a fantasy manor, she's the one who will point out that building an extra door wherever you feel like it is going to get awfully pricey.
(To be fair, I also love Christopher, with his drama king flair and his secret passion for DRAINS AND DITCHING.)
I have mentioned I think that this book was incredibly formative for me. The legend of Tam Lin, in general, was incredibly formative for me; I spent a lot of my childhood collecting retellings, and there was a time when I could recite the whole ballad from memory, or at least a version of the whole ballad, though I think that time has possibly passed. And it's not like you needed to search for an origin of my thing for ladies saying "hey, don't worry, distressed dude in peril, I got this one," because that is just objectively awesome, but if you were to go looking, you'd probably find it here.
Which means it is time for a poll that I can't actually vote in! GREATEST TAM LIN. TAM LINS BATTLE TO THE DEATH. GO.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 35
My favorite Tam Lin is . . .
View Answers
. . . the ballad . . .?
3 (8.6%)
lit-nerd-paradise college Tam Lin!
11 (31.4%)
sensible Elizabethan Tam Lin!
7 (20.0%)
deeply and confusingly meta Diana Wynne Jones Tam Lin!
13 (37.1%)
hilarious 1970s movie Tam Lin about THE DRUGS and THE DRINK!
0 (0.0%)
some other Tam Lin you have somehow failed to collect!
1 (2.9%)
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Date: 2012-11-02 09:33 pm (UTC)That said, what is the 1970s movie and where can I find it? I NEED IT.
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Date: 2012-11-02 09:41 pm (UTC)It stars Ava Gardner as a WICKED SEDUCTRESS who corrupts young people with THE FAST LIFE and it is also known as THE DEVIL'S WIDOW and I can't talk about it without laughing.
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Date: 2012-11-02 09:43 pm (UTC)...uh, yeah, this book was formative for me too. Kate being all sensible and, okay, yes, having sister issues and I'm-ugly issues but you know what? She has TOO MUCH TO DO and is TOO SENSIBLE to angst over them! And I loooove what you say about why she's a heroine, because so true!
Also? Christopher/Kate romance ONE OF MY FAVORITES EVER, I love how their romance consists of one of them pointing out the other is being stupid, and eventually both of them getting more mature to the point they don't immediately snap at the other. And also conversations in the dark and learning each other's voices really well. LOVE. (I also love that she goes to save him, as you noted, and also I totally love that he's the pretty one. This may be the only book I read as a kid where the guy got to be the pretty one.)
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Date: 2012-11-02 09:53 pm (UTC)And yes, Christopher/Kate is SUPER adorable. You don't look like a god, Christopher Heron, you look like a piece of gilded gingerbread! (I have a couple of formative texts where the boy was the pretty one, but it never gets less hilarious to me. My favorite iteration is in L.J. Smith's Night of the Solstice/Heart of Valor duology, which has four siblings in which the two oldest girls are respectively the sword-slinging heir to King Arthur and a mad-scientist sorceress, and the boy is the pretty one who gets hit on by fairies a lot.)
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Date: 2012-11-02 11:47 pm (UTC)Best. Line. Ever.
...I might need to check out those L.J. Smith books. They sound fabulous!
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Date: 2012-11-03 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 10:16 pm (UTC)SOME DUDES: Hey ladies don't go to the castle where the hot fairy guy lives if you are a pure and virtuous maid.
JANET: Dude, I am TOTALLY going to the castle where the hot fairy guy lives.
*SOME TIME LATER*
JANET: Crap, unplanned pregnancy! Oh well, this is what abortion herbs are for.
TAM LIN: Um actually it would be super helpful if instead you could be super heroic and rescue me from the fairy queen? Because otherwise I'm getting sacrificed to hell.
JANET: . . . what does rescuing you entail?
TAM LIN: Mostly pulling me off a horse and hanging onto me while being pregnant. She might turn me into some monsters or something while you're doing it, I guess.
JANET: Check, check, check! Cool, got this.
FAIRY QUEEN: A plague on both your houses, jerks.
(TINY BECCA: WHY DON'T LADIES SAVE THE DAY IN EVERY FAIRY TALE.)
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Date: 2012-11-02 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 12:02 am (UTC)(It's good, right? I'm assuming it's good.)
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Date: 2012-11-03 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 12:09 am (UTC)Just. KATE. And CHRISTOPHER. And KATE AND CHRISTOPHER. And the end of the book where Kate does her thing and the Lady does her thing and the CURTSEY and then Christopher spends most of the rest of the book WHINING and Kate is just all "oh you" but too surprised to smack him and THIS BOOK I LOVE IT SO I CLUTCH IT TO MY BOSOM.
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Date: 2012-11-03 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 03:24 am (UTC)Oh, and can we take a second to talk about Sir Geoffrey? Who jokes with Kate and is a loyal servant of whichever queen is actually ruling and loves his family so much and is awesome? Because I love Sir Geoffrey.
But not as much as I love Kate because no one is as awesome as Kate. I especially love the way she manages to love Alicia while still being totally exasperated with her. FAVORITE.
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Date: 2012-11-03 05:48 am (UTC)I also love how Kate is not a martyr to Alicia; she does not comfort herself with the fact that she's suffering for Alicia's sake, she just plain doesn't want to do it. It's just that there isn't a choice!
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Date: 2012-11-03 12:38 am (UTC)I've read the ballad, DWJ, and Pamela Dean, but c'mon it's KATE SUTTON!! KATE SUTTON MY BELOVED!!! Sensible Elizabethan Tam Lin with excellent romance and ladies for the win.
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Date: 2012-11-03 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 12:54 am (UTC)Tam Lin is the greatest, and by Tam, I mean Janet, obviously.
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Date: 2012-11-03 05:43 am (UTC)All Janets are great! I'm pretty sure have yet to come across a Janet-analog that I have not loved. JANETS DO WHAT THEY WANT and what they want is to be awesome.
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Date: 2012-11-03 01:13 am (UTC)Jo Walton, Tam Lin, a Barrayaran Shakespeare Play. When Barrayar came out of its age of isolation, there were three new Shakespeare plays in the canon. This was one of them.
Sonya Taaffe, "Teinds". "You hold me so tightly as you sleep, as though I might melt with midnight into cold air on the pillow, a crease in the sheets that smells like the hair of someone you used to love."
_The Perilous Gard_ is one of those books I kept meaning to read back when I read a lot of paper books from the library! Alas. Someday it will have an ebook edition.
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Date: 2012-11-03 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-03 07:56 pm (UTC)There was something a little odd about it (she says, immediately picking out the only part of the book she didn't like, like a dick) as an American author recasting a British fable, specifically in those familiar terms of the old magic vs. Christianity. American children's authors of this period always seem to get extremely fond of the imaginary druidic religion they've cooked up, but in this case she was so committed to the (semihistorical) Christian victory that it was very "yes loss of old religion and folkways and power dynamics that put a check on overproud aristocracy but... Christianity! Also... ???"
So should I read the Sherwood Ring? Is it as good?
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Date: 2012-11-04 03:45 am (UTC)I love Pamela Dean's version too but my relationship with it gets more and more complicated the older to get. My relationship with The Perilous Gard just gets MORE AND MORE STARRY-EYED the older I get. Although I will also say I don't think I ever noticed before this read just how heavy the Christianity motif is; when I was younger I pretty much always read them as straight fairies, without even registering the religious background.
The Sherwood Ring is NOT as good as the Perilous Gard, and if you go in with that expectation you'll be disappointed, but it is nonetheless deeply enjoyable and a good afternoon's entertainment! So, yes, but wait a bit I would say so your heart is not crushed by the fact that it's not more Perilous Gard.
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Date: 2012-11-04 02:42 am (UTC)Also, Elizabethan Tam Lin! I must read this!
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Date: 2012-11-04 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-05 07:31 pm (UTC)I think the only Pamela Dean book I've read is Tam Lin, which I liked a lot too, and Fire and Hemlock was my first DWJ. I'm not sure I've ever read the original ballad, though.
And I want more of this retelling/racebent Tam Lin.
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Date: 2012-11-06 06:55 am (UTC). . . oh gosh, that racebent retelling is super fascinating. Thank you for linking! (So much better than the 1970s film with Ava Gardner!)