Tamsin

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Like his enchanting The Last Unicorn, Beagle's newest fantasy features characters so real they leap off his pages and into readers' souls. Tamsin Willoughby, dead some 300 years, haunts ramshackle old Stourhead Farm in Dorset, England, an ancient 700-acre estate that 13-year-old Jenny's new, English stepfather is restoring. Thoroughly American Jenny, miserable at being transplanted from New York City to rural Britain, finds a suffering kindred spirit in Tamsin, a ghost who is mourning Edric, a love she lost during Dorset's punitive Bloody Assizes under King James II. Tamsin leads Jenny through an engrossing night world inhabited by an array of British spirits--the Black Dog, a braggart Boggart, ominous Oakmen, the shapeshifting Pooka and a marvelous mystical army-booted Earth Mother. To save Tamsin and gentle Edric from eternal torment, Jenny faces evil personified: demonic Judge Jeffries, who sentenced hundreds of people to brutal execution during the Assizes. Slipping effortlessly between Jenny's brash 1999 lingo, the raw primeval dialect of ancient Dorset and Tamsin's exquisite Jacobean English, Beagle has created a stunning tale of good battling evil, of wonder and heartbreak and of a love able to outlast the worst vileness of the human heart. Fantasy rarely dances through the imagination in more radiant garb than this. Oct. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Jenny is most unhappy when her mother marries an Englishman and she must move with them to England. It's bad enough having to leave New York City. London would have at least been acceptable. But the family, which includes Evan's two sons, must move to a remote farm in Dorset, where Evan has been hired to make the land workable again. The house they move into is cold, damp and haunted. Jenny meets the ghost of Tamsin Willoughby, who died during the time of the Bloody Assizes and the dreaded Judge Jeffreys over 300 years previously. Jeffreys was determined to marry Tamsin, even though she was in love with a young musician. The wicked judge was responsible for the disappearance of Tamsin's true love. Now only Jenny can help Tamsin escape Jeffreys and her Earthly bonds. This ghost story builds at a leisurely pace. Jenny is a likable heroine. The Dorset setting is full of such old English creatures as boggarts and pookahs. The ending is satisfying. A good read. KLIATT Codes: JSA—Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Penguin Putnam, Roc, 275p. 21cm. 99-30695., $13.00. Ages 13 to adult. Reviewer: Susan E. Chmurynsky; Media Spec., E. Kentwood Campus, Kentwood, MI , July 2001 (Vol. 35, No. 4)

Library Journal

When her mother remarries, Jenny reluctantly moves to England, convinced that her young life has taken a turn for the worse. Once ensconced in an old house in rural Dorset, however, Jenny encounters the ghost of a young girl whose plight binds her to the world of the living in spite of her desire to experience what lies beyond death. The author of The Last Unicorn tells an engaging story of a friendship that transcends time in his latest novel. Steeped in English folklore and ghost stories, this gracefully written story is suitable for both adult and YA readers. For most fantasy collections. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Contemporary ghost yarn from the author of Giant Bones (1997), etc. Thirteen-year-old Jenny Gluckstein leaves New York with her mother, Sally, to live with her new family, English stepfather Evan and stepbrothers Tony and Julian, in bucolic Dorset, England. Agricultural biologist Evan will invigorate a rundown farm and fix up its huge, dilapidated old manor house. Meanwhile, Jenny seethes with resentment at the unwelcome relocation—until she discovers that the house is haunted by a mischievous boggart. Next, her beloved Mister Cat finds his way up to the closed-off third floor, returning with a ghost cat that only Jenny can see! She talks things over with the boggart, then banishes him with a gift of reading spectacles. Up on the third floor, Jenny meets the ghost of Tamsin Willoughby, who died aged 20 more than 300 years ago. In Tamsin's company, Jenny meets other supernatural creatures: the shapeshifting, untrustworthy Pooka, the ominous Black Dog, the billy-blind with his badly timed good advice—and the terrifying Wild Hunt screaming across the sky. Slowly, talking with local historians, drawing out Tamsin's recollections, Jenny pieces together a tragic story that hinges on the 17th-century Monmouth rebellion and its aftermath, the bloody reprisals exacted by Judge Jeffries. But what dreadful secret binds the ghosts of Tamsin and her innocent sweetheart together with the Judge's horrid, monomaniacal shade—and the terrible Wild Hunt itself? An appealing intermingling of history, folklore, and the supernatural, but no real chills or tension—and lively young Jenny simply overwhelms everybody else.