The Bodhisattva

After a few weeks off from this feature used to work on launching BookSpot Central, I’m back to regular schedule with my weekly participation with a random group of bloggers to discuss a novel or collection that slipped through the cracks and deserves diggin’ through the crates (or *sigh* more boring, online) to give a second, or perhaps even a first look. As many know both here and at Fantasybookspot.com (now BooksSpot central) I’ve always been a person who likes to give credit where it’s due, be it from well-known mainstream sources to the niche products and because of the latter, I do try to avoid ground I have covered before that may in fact otherwise fall neatly into this type of feature. I’d point to search for my Top 100 of the Last Ten years list for some pretty great recent reads, many of which were under the radar. You can either search this bog for the individual posts broken down into groups of ten or view them all at a sister site BestFantasyBooks.com (where you can see other recommendations as well). Also, while I do read quite a few books (even with my reading down due to taking on a Moff at the site and with Heliotrope - I do read several dozen books a year still) I can’t say that any book chosen for this feature wasn’t a commercial hit, as a lot of times you’ll run into a foreign translation underead in english that sold millions  in the Far East or something. I don’t know how many people have read something Su Tong’s My Life as Emperor, but I’d guess it’s possible it went over substantially better overseas (it’s a fantastic book people - truly one of my favorites!) before coming here. Also, this is no a review, just a brief pointer and some thoughts about these books (though I may point to reviews or opinions that  I think are helpful at times)

This week we are going to be talking about a writer that has a consistent, unique ability to produce books that resonate individual craft, yet not so in terms of being something that becomes more and more unapproachable - his complexity is in-story, not guarding it; he’s clever enough to only revealing being too clever in isolated instances with readers who can take it in without taking away from the story for others, that offers reads like Kelly Link described when I interviewed her:

“The good ones are the ones that surprise you by turning out to be a different book each time you read them.”

Many know Beagle from two works that I consider fundamental works, The Last Unicorn (an incredible success) and The Innkeeper’s Song and they should know that there is no evidence of  a sub-par Beagle project, be it a novel or collection.  Tamsin, like most of Beagle’s projects in inviting from the beginning, it’s this open-door quality that separates Beagle from writers just as talented that I think are just too enamored with locks more than door- it’s a ghost story, a haunted house story, and a coming of age story - all themes that make seasoned readers pass; been there, done that, but you’d miss an oportunity to hear a song from the album that is Beagle’s career, an album, largely made of hits and cult classics.

Our narrator is 19 year-old Jenny, calling back to several years before when she was first displaced, a resident of new York making the move to an estate in England following/moving with  the new relationship/love her mother (divorced) with a British biologist. There is an obvious voice, thought process, or subject of concerns in Jenny that will be relateable to anyone of that age, but more-so it was something I related to as I too was a bit of a world traveller as a child and while Jenny was older than I, I can see the certain amount of angst she has that would come with the advanced age of a teen. For me it was more exploration; for her - at least initially -  a little more like  banishment - from the city to a farm house.

It is the deviation that Beagle know where his notes comes into play. You step from one room to another in a Beagle novel and you know it, step into another country and you have what is essentially an e-ticket in your hands. Jenny will find a friend and grow-up as she settles in.

The story is riddled with both folklore references and historical references from the aftermath of the The Battle of Sedgemoor, to Pookas and Boggarts as Jenny and her ghost friend, Tamsin Willoughby, a resident of estate 300 years ago both come to grips with the  reality and the supernatural truths of their lives, to find and make their fears and  memories just memories.  There is also Mister Cat, of which nothing more has to be said; only that their is a character named Mister Cat. There would be some truth to referring to it as a bit of a backyard Narnia or Wonderland, but I see more of a YA Little, Big.

Nick Gevers (for Infinity Plus) has an excellent review (he’s really one of the best in this field) where he offers a legitimate question and with it  final thoughts formed from that question:

But the Young Adult formula remains in force throughout. Tamsin’s centuries-old love, however extraordinary and exotic its terms, must be resolved happily, and therefore simplistically. Supernatural Dorset exists chiefly to serve as Jenny’s mirror, in which the banalities of her adolescence can be reflected, mooned over, and (one sincerely hopes) palliated. The filter for all events is an immature consciousness. This may be a YA necessity, the text functioning as the young reader’s allegory of adolescent transition; but why must one of the Fantasy genre’s foremost prose stylists operate in such a mode in the first place? He should have known better; but as things stand, Tamsin is islands of magnificence in a sea of Whine.

Though a large part of me agrees -  Tamsin does function as a top shelf YA novel that can be appreciated by adult more than the former that implies to all - I can’t say that the what if came to my mind and overrode the what is.  I have to admit I’m not, or ever really was  what I’d call a YA reader, and it’s only a development because I was exposed to classics when I was young, but if wasn’t from Twain, Dumas, or Dickens  that my appreciation of language actually came from - it came from Patricia Mckillip’s Riddle of the Stars (the title of the first collected version of her wonderful Riddlemaster series) - it is this type of lyrical, melodic,  prose that Beagle brings to the table - the family table.

Good music is both timeless and ageless.

Past Forgotten Fridays:

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

Last Hot Time by John M. Ford

The Steam Magnate by Dana Copithorne

Dossier by Stepan Chapman

Black Brillion by Matthew Hughes

Pandora, by Holly Hollander by Gene Wolfe

Coelestis by Paul Park

Sarah Canary by  Karen Joy Fowler

Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop