Reading Fantasy

Raise your hand if you ever read The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. Higher! I can't see it ... OK, leave a comment instead. The Last Unicorn was one of my favorite books at one point during my teens in the seventies. I mostly haven't thought of it in years, but last month I became obsessed with getting it into the hands of my daughters, who both love reading fantasy. I looked for it on the shelves of our big central library, but they didn't have it. They did, however, have some other books by Beagle, so I checked out a couple.

I didn't even know whether this author was still alive, much less still writing! (He actually wrote the screenplay for the animated Lord of the Rings movie that hooked young Peter Jackson on the book.) Tamsin was published in 1999, and I was blown away by how good it was. It is about Jenny Gluckstein, a sullen 13-year-old girl who has to move from her home in New York City to a farm in rural Dorset, England when her mom remarries. Determined to hate everything about the experience, Jenny is nevertheless sucked in when she meets Tamsin, the ghost of a girl who lived on the farm 300 years earlier. Tamsin introduces Jenny to a host of "creatures of the night" from Dorset folklore, all of whom play a part in solving Tamsin's mystery and freeing her so that she can finally rest in peace.

I loved how the story wove folklore with historical events. It was also a damned good teen girl angst novel, and I am hard-pressed to know how a 69-year-old man could capture the voice of the teenaged Jenny so well.

Reading Tamsin made me think about fantasy writing. As I said, my daughters are both crazy about fantasy. Their standards are high; the ultimate dis' of a book is "It's obviously a rip off of Lord of the Rings." They tend to like the writing of Tamora Pierce, and novels based on fairytales: Spindle's End by Robin McKinley and Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine are two that my eldest took to college with her last year. My youngest likes the writing of Diana Wynne Jones: Howl's Moving Castle, which you might know from the Japanese animé film. They both loved East by Edith Pattou.

I too enjoy reading fantasy, but there is so much being published right now that is mediocre, especially in the world of children's and young adult literature. I guess I am just bored by dragons, quests, and trilogies. Simply including wizards does not make a good fantasy either. I am tired of heroes whose names are derived from Aragorn. Maybe that's it: too much fantasy writing is derivative. I know that lots of fantasy is derived from old myths and legends, but it seems as if now we are getting derivatives of derivatives.

When I read fantasy I do not want it to feel self-conscious or contrived in any way. (I know that many people will strongly disagree with me on this point, but I found Harry Potter to be derivative, self-conscious and contrived -- especially after the first book. But I digress.) I tend to love fantasy that is rooted in old magic and folklore.

Here are some of my favorites: The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander; The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper; The Diamond in the Window, The Astonishing Stereoscope, and The Swing in the Summerhouse by Jane Langton; The Owl Service by Allen Garner. I had an aunt who worked in publishing and occasionally I would be the lucky recipient of a bag of books, galley proofs and what-not, so I got some interesting books that way. One that I loved -- now out of print -- was The Seal Singing, an environmental ghost story that took place in Scotland.

Enough pontificating. Check out Tamsin if you enjoy fantasy or ghost stories. One last thing -- in one of my ridiculous online impulse buys, I ordered 2 autographed copies of The Last Unicorn from the publisher, one for each of my girls. I hope they like it!