Tamsin

The story is beautifully written and told from the perspective of a 13-year-old girl who moves with her parents from Manhattan to a sprawling farm house in England. The house is haunted and inhabited by a ghost named Tamsin, who died more than 300 years ago. Jenny learns a lot about Tamsin and about the period of time she lived in. The story contains interesting historical snippets about the Bloody Assizes of 1685, the brutal and merciless Chief Justice Jeffries of Wem, the Monmouth Rebellion ag [...]

I remember being an adolescent girl. That seems normal enough, because I was one for several years. It's a bit scarier that Peter Beagle seems to remember being an adolescent girl.Jenny Gluckstein is thirteen years old, and living with her divorced mother, a music teacher in New York, and visiting regularly with her father, an opera singer. She's a bit of a misfit at school, which most adolescents are, but she has two friends she spends a lot of time with, and she has a cat, Mister Cat.And then [...]

Sometimes I forget about Peter Beagle, because I don't actually read that much fantasy. He wrote, of course, the fantasy classic "The Last Unicorn," which is a completely lovely book. But Tamsin is genius. It's written from the point of view of a 13 year old girl from New York, Jenny, who has to move to Dorset when her mother remarries. The old farmhouse turns out to be haunted by the gentle ghost of young Tamsin, who died During the Monmouth Rebellion. (Captain Blood readers take note: wicked J [...]

I love, love, love this book. It's a ghost story about Jenny, an American teenager who is transplanted to an old manor in Dorset, England, when her mother remarries. The first-person point-of-view is an interesting switch for Beagle, who writes mostly in the third person, but it's very successful and just as beautifully written as his other books; he gets Jenny's voice just right without losing his usual lyricism. Along with ghosts, there are a myriad of other folklorish creatures, including an [...]

I first knew Peter S. Beagle when I was eight or nine years old, as the writer of an excellent little introduction to The Lord of the Rings called Tolkien's Magic Ring. He is probably to blame for my habit of actually reading forewords and prologues; many are rough, but occasionally you find a gem.Despite the cult success of The Last Unicorn, Peter remains an under-recognized writer. He writes books that change you; his craft is excellent. So far I've found in each an original story, well-told. [...]

This deserves 4 stars based on the superb writing quality alone. The 8-point font really strained my eyes the whole I was reading this.It's about 13-year-old Jenny who moves from New York City to Dorset when her mother remarries. She runs into ghosts and other supernatural beings, but it's never scary. The ghost of Tamsin befriends Jenny, who is intensely curious about Tamsin's life and death. Tamsin isn't introduced in the story until about a third of the way through, so it's a lot more than a [...]

Did not finish. I got about half way through it then skimmed to find out the ending. No rating.The narrator doesn't sound at all like a nineteen year old reminiscing about something that happened when she was thirteen; she sounds about ten or eleven years old throughout. With the exceptions of Mr Cat and Julian, the characterizations are one dimensional. When I think of Meg Murry, Anne Shirley, Jo March, and Blossom Culp, in comparison Jenny just feels flat, repetitive, uninteresting and uninter [...]

I can understand how Peter S. Beagle and Jack Cady became friends. Along with their vision of a world where the boundaries between Here and Now and There and Then are not absolute, they both write with an unfathomable depth of understanding of and respect for their characters and for those characters' stories, and also empathy without excuses, even a tenderness, a graciousness that allows the truth of the stories and characters to stand on their own and shine in their own light — and embrace t [...]

After hearing so many allusions to this book on livejournal's book communities, I decided to give this book a try and I wasn't disappointed. I expected to be annoyed at Jenny, but her voice drew me in and wouldn't let go. She goes through all the confusion and sulking a teenager pulled away from home goes through, but she acknowledges in her narrative that her behavior embarrassed her. Her semi-denial of her respect for Evan was realistic, as expected of teenagers, as is her gradual respect and [...]

Hm. I wonder if this book influenced Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven at all. For at least the first hundred pages, the writing is so full of "teen posturing language" (forgive me, teens--I couldn't think of a better way to say it), that it's nearly unbearable. No, I take that back. It is unbearable. I skimmed and skipped, hoping that the book would actually become readable. After all, I had read Peter Beagle before and I didn't remember him being so awful. When the title character finally enters th [...]

"My Jenny, I will never see your own land, yet well I know night's as dark there as in Dorset. And night is not ours, and never will be, not till all is night. I tell you it will not, Jenny -- never any more than the sea, for all we plow and harrow up that darkness. What yet swims in the deepest deep, I'm sure none can say -- and not even the Pooka knows all that may move beyond the light. But you have friends there now -- do but remember that, and you'll come to no harm. You have friends in the [...]

My sister read this and I thought that I would also like it since it was about ghosts but I couldn't even get through more than half. I hope to give this another try and maybe change my review.

The plot was interesting but the characters! Oh my lord, the characters. I guess I am one of those annoying people who need likable characters to fully appreciate the book, and that is where this book failed me big time. I realize how long this is, so here is my summary: I hated EVERYONE except Meena, Julian, and Mister Cat. And I guess Tony but he was superfluous. Also, when did teens start calling smoking pot "getting lifted"?I will now elaborate on the top three annoying characters in descend [...]

Yes, another re-read. Maybe because I want to ease in 2016 gently, starting with familiar and reliable loved stories. God knows this year could be horrendously scary and full of unfamiliar stuffs. Tamsin still holds the fort. Still made me tears up a couple of time. I'd give away copies of it to everyone I know if I could. --------------Bumping in to 5 stars, because a book that can be read over and over again without loosing its glory is a special one indeed. the last read even gave me a creep [...]

Not sure when I first got hold of this book, but finally started reading it. If you've read Beagle's "The Last Unicorn" then you'll have an understanding of the way he writes. Not only are places and people vivid, but so are their feelings. This book is vintage Peter Beagle.The story is about a teenage girl who ends up moving with her mother and new step-family to an old farm in Dorset. As the stepfather struggles to make the farm a profitable home, the girl, Jenny, discovers that the place is h [...]

I hate novels written in first person. This novel is written in the first person. I love this novel so much. Because it's first person. That's how good the Beagle is.

Don't judge a book by its cover! Based on the cover, I had always thought this book was about a ghost cat named Tamsin. Nope! While there is a ghost cat, and there is a ghost named Tamsin, they are not the same ghost. Duh, me! (My favorite character in the book, btw, was the non-ghost cat, Mr. Cat. But I digress.)So, actually, Tamsin is about a 13-year-old girl from New York City, Jenny, who is suddenly ripped away from everything she knows and dumped in the English countryside when her divorced [...]

If you happened to read my fangirl gushing about the wit, humor, and beauty of The Last Unicorn, then you're well aware that I'm a fan of Peter S. Beagle's writing. And given that my current"to read" list on is pretty much everything he's ever written, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I've already found my way to another Beagle work. This time, it was Tamsin that thrilled me to the depths of my writerly soul, but in new and unexpected ways. Any illusions I had that this book would be filled wi [...]

(Original review date: 1 August 2007)I don't know how to describe this book, other than that it made me remember why I fell in love with reading in the first place. It's amazing. It's beautiful. I wished it would never end. I haven't felt this way about a book in so long I can't remember.I wasn't expecting to like it all that much. Sure, it's by Beagle, and you can always count on him for dazzling mythic fantasy and gorgeous prose. But the jacket didn't make it seem like anything special: A teen [...]

to god, i asked, "lord, will a man ever learn to write a female teenager properly?", and god said, "lo, i have already made it so, back in 1999." thank god for peter beagle.

Utterly heartbreaking beautiful; but then, I expected no less from the author of The Last Unicorn, which is maybe the most utterly heartbreaking beautiful book I know. In some ways Mr. Beagle seems to have been sharing notes on folklore with Susan Cooper (the encounter with the boggart; the profound English sense of place, with deep roots in local history and in the land; the Wild Hunt hounding poor condemned souls through the stormy sky). Which is not to say it seemed derivative (and I'm not su [...]

With a contemporary setting and a ghost story as the foundation of the story, this is closer to A Fine and Private Place rather than The Last Unicorn or The Inkeeper's Song. Being told in the first person by a thirteen years old girl (Jennnifer - it comes from Guinevere, but she prefers Jenny) , the success of the book will rely heavily on your initial reaction to the storyteller. I was conquered and enchanted from the very first pages. I still remember what it meansto be 13, shy but bloody mind [...]

Beagle's "The Last Unicorn" is up there with my most favorite fantasy novels of all time. I've never read any of his other works, so when I happened across this one at the library I thought I'd give it a go. It wasn't at all what I expected and was disappointed enough to set it aside after reading the first chapter and skimming through a few others. Since reading the opinions of other reviewers, I see that many believe it to be an excellent example of what they love about Beagle's craft despite [...]

Once again, Peter Beagle does it. This book was really, really good, full of rich, likeable, imperfect characters and believable world-building (even if the world in which the novel takes place is very close to our own modern one). And like Innkeeper's Song or The Last Unicorn, there's a sense of history, of continuity, of other stories, intruiguing and barely hinted at, hovering on the edge of the tale we're traveling in. This is the first book of Beagle's that I've read in which he uses the fi [...]

I loved the protagonist "voice." It's one of the best uses of the memoir, telling a story after it's already happened, style I've read. I particularly liked how honest and self-aware it was. For example, there's lots of 19 year old Jenny (the protagonist) flinching and being embarrassed/ashamed at the behavior of her 13-15 year old self (the age she is when the events of the story take place). It really felt authentic and very, very relatable. One thing I wasn't expecting and was so pleased by, [...]

The ghosts in this story work about the same way they do in Beagle's A Fine and Private Place, but otherwise the two books are quite a bit different. The first person teen narrative and Dorset setting don't have the panache of a loner living in an NYC graveyard, but I came away liking the narrator fine, and reviving an old farmstead kept the adults in Jenny's life busy and out of the way.It's the supernatural life she turns up that holds the most interest, of course. The ghost story is tragic an [...]

4.5 stars for Tamsin. This one took me a bit to get into, but once the plot moved across the water I was hooked. Absolutely loved the relationship between Jenny & Mister Cat. The mythological creatures you get to meet in this novel are wonderful and sometimes terrible and utterly enthralling. Tamsin herself and Miss Sophia Brown are very engaging and the interactions between the two girls and the two cats were just gorgeous. Judge Jeffreys is a villain who is a real historical figure and he [...]

Jenny es feliz viviendo en Nueva York. Al menos tan feliz como puede serlo una adolescente problemática y con padres divorciados. Vamos, que se las apaña para sobrevivir. No es guapa, no es alta y tampoco es divertida. Sólo tiene dos amigos y un gato llamado Señor Gato. Pero su vida da un vuelco radical cuando su madre le anuncia que van a mudarse a la campiña inglesa a vivir en una enorme mansión con su nuevo novio y con los dos hijos de este. Jenny, obviamente, se niega en rotundo, pero [...]

Soooooooo boring. Honestly. I made myself plow through almost 120 pages before I just could not do it anymore. Other reviews mentioned that the plot finally takes off around page 100. I suppose there was some glimmer of hope that something might actually happen, but I couldn't keep going based off a small glimmer. The first 100 pages center around a girl that has to move to England due to her mom re-marrying. Beagle includes all sorts of details that just don't matter and tries to write in a 13 [...]

The one where teenaged Jenny is dragged against her will to live on a farm in Dorset, where she meets a ghost and finds a quest.This gets off to a very slow start, and if it had been anyone but Peter Beagle, I certainly wouldn't have slogged through 45 pages of Jenny in New York whining. But once they get to England, things take off quickly, and the rest of the book is mostly as good as I could wish for -- though of course it's a pale light compared toThe Last Unicorn.