I already have the fact that I like stories about ghosts - especially those English ones. I quite often reach for tales and usually they are classic texts that have their own age. TAMSIN by Peter S. Beagle is a contemporary story that combines our modernity with the old, ancient England and its possessions, beliefs, and folklore. And it is precisely this that attracted me to this book! That folklore! Even more than the ghosts...

TAMSIN is written in the first person, where a New York teenager is forced by "bad" luck to move to England... and not just to London - but to a village, to an old residence full of strange creatures. Our Jenny, however, has a loyal friend who understands her and with whom she can talk - Mr. Cat. In my humble opinion, Mr. Cat is the best character in the whole story.

The author tried to fit the story into fiction... and perhaps this didn't work out well for the book. It is read quickly and rather pleasantly, but it doesn't sweep you away. However, the characters are rather flat, and the mysterious phenomenon itself, the ghost of the girl TAMSIN... well, her story is unfortunately schematic... Generally, the author uses schemes, both those related to the plot and those ideologically shaped.

What is definitely a big plus is the FOLKLORE, all those magical beings that unfold through the story. It's a pity that they don't play a greater role and are rather just passers-by, characters who appear to add magic to the story. I liked how Jenny's father talked about all those boggarts, puck, deboluds, etc. I really liked that... but when those creatures started to appear, jump out of closets, chimneys, and bathrooms, I got the impression that they weren't properly built up, that they were just stuffed into the story and confronted with the main character, who rather accepted them quite ordinarily.

Generally, the book is interesting, definitely nice for young people. I missed a plot in it... that is, in my perception it was very simple, too simple, easy to predict. However, it is a fairy tale-like story and that works in its favor. I think it can be for someone the beginning of a fascination with folklore - not just English. Of course, when reaching for TAMSIN, one must remember that it is not a horror and it doesn't scare at all. It is rather a story of a lost teenager - and indeed... the book might have been better if the author hadn't opted for a first-person narration.

The old residence hides many secrets.

Publishing House Zysk i S-ka

Review copy

Near the end of summer, I often experience a strong urge to read something spooky. And "Tamsin" was indeed a perfect choice.

This is a lovely ghost story that beautifully weaves together the real history of the bloody aftermath of the Monmouth Rebellion and the various supernatural entities of British folklore. The atmosphere it creates is truly captivating. It's one of those books that makes me long to visit the setting, which in this case is Dorset, England. The teenage protagonist, Jenny, although not perfect, is highly likable. She is trying to solve the mystery of her ghost friend while also dealing with the challenges of living in a different country with a new and larger family. And of course, any book that features major cat characters like the inimitable Mister Cat and Miss Sophia Brown earns a big plus in my opinion.

Admittedly, it could be a bit meandering at times. Also, I was a little disappointed that Julian didn't have as significant a role as I had expected. (Non-annoying child characters are truly something to be cherished.) However, these are just minor complaints. Overall, it was an excellent read, and I can safely say that I've become a fan of Peter Beagle (and not just because of "The Last Unicorn").

One last note: Whether it's an adult book or a YA book isn't clear cut to me. But perhaps it doesn't really matter.

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. However, I was wrong. While there is indeed a ghost cat and a ghost named Tamsin, they are not the same. How silly of me! (By the way, my favorite character in the book was the non-ghost cat, Mr. Cat. But I digress.)

So, actually, Tamsin is about a 13-year-old girl from New York City named Jenny. When her divorced mother marries an English agriculture expert/farmer, Jenny is suddenly uprooted from everything she knows and transplanted to the English countryside. Everything is strange to her, and she feels like she's on a different planet all alone. So, it's hardly a surprise when she starts seeing ghosts and beings like boggarts and pookas. Complications and drama then unfold.

It's a nice story - a fish-out-of-water tale on multiple levels. Firstly, teens often feel that way in general. Secondly, Jenny is in a new country with a new family and no friends. Thirdly, she's being confronted by supernatural creatures. Fourthly, Tamsin is also trapped where she doesn't belong and doesn't know why. Fifthly, Jenny both matures and finds her place while helping Tamsin. Sixthly, the moral of the story at the end is that strangeness is not altogether a bad thing. I wouldn't call it anything exceptional, and it's certainly not as poignant or memorable as The Last Unicorn, but it's a sweet read. Also, it won the Mythopoeic Award, so others think more highly of it than I do!

As for the narration: this is narrated by Peter Beagle himself. He's not a bad reader, but unfortunately he has no British accent at all. And that's a shame because there are several different accents needed to represent various characters throughout the story, and I would have loved to hear them.

I'm giving this about 3 1/2 stars - rounding down just because I don't feel excited about the book at the moment.

This book is a captivating ghost story that stands out, I believe, for the author.

It centers around a 13-year-old girl's encounter with a ghost at a dilapidated manor in rural England. The narrative is beautifully crafted, astonishingly bringing to life the mindset of a teenage girl who has the ability to perceive the supernatural, whether it be ghosts or the mythical beings that populate the rural English countryside.

The narrator, Jenny, shares her experience of moving from New York to Dorset due to her mother's remarriage and her transformation from loathing the place to falling in love with it. I was truly amazed by how much I adored this book, despite its slightly young adult nature. It won the 2000 Mythopoeic Award and was nominated for several others.

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This book truly deserves 4 stars, mainly because of its superb writing quality.

However, the 8-point font was a bit of a challenge as it really strained my eyes throughout the reading process.

The story is about 13-year-old Jenny, who relocates from New York City to Dorset after her mother remarries. Here, she encounters ghosts and other supernatural entities, yet it never feels scary.

The ghost of Tamsin befriends Jenny, who is extremely curious about Tamsin's life and death. Interestingly, Tamsin isn't introduced until about a third of the way through the story, which makes it more than just a simple ghost story.

Discovering information about Tamsin's death is no easy task, as it's revealed bit by bit. The ending builds up to a pretty big climax. Overall, it's extremely well written, and the story comes alive in a truly captivating way.

It keeps the reader engaged from start to finish, with its well-developed characters and intriguing plot.

Despite the small issue with the font size, the quality of the writing more than makes up for it.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good supernatural mystery with a touch of heart.

I love, love, love this book.

It's a captivating ghost story that follows the adventures of Jenny, an American teenager. When her mother remarries, Jenny is uprooted and transplanted to an old manor in Dorset, England.

The first-person point-of-view in this book is an interesting departure for the author, Beagle, who typically writes in the third person. However, this switch is very successful. The book is just as beautifully written as his other works. Beagle manages to capture Jenny's voice perfectly, while still maintaining his usual lyricism.

In addition to the spooky ghosts, there are a myriad of other fascinating folklorish creatures in the story. One standout is an excellent pooka. There is also a wealth of music, history, and plants, all of which are major attractions for me.

This book truly has it all - a great story, well-developed characters, and a rich and detailed setting. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good ghost story or is interested in folklore and history.

I love this book with every single fibre of my being.

I first read it during my teenage years in the 2000s, and it still holds up remarkably well. The entire story is told from Jenny's perspective. She is around 19 years old and writes about the events that occurred to her between the ages of 12 and probably 16. Peter has crafted Jenny's character flawlessly. From her behavior as a pre-teen and early teenager to the embarrassment she feels at 19 when looking back on her younger self, every reaction and emotion is incredibly believable and relatable.

The prose in this book is simply beautiful. There are countless quotes and descriptions that will remain etched in my memory. Reading it is like being cocooned in a warm blanket, sipping on a hot mug of tea, wearing fuzzy socks, while a storm rages outside.

Mister Cat and Miss Sophia Brown have such distinct personalities that I will love them forever.

All the supernatural beings are both fascinating and terrifying. I'm particularly intrigued and want to know more about the Oakmans wood.

And then there's Tamsin. Just...

Did not finish. I got about half way through it then skimmed to find out the ending. The story just didn't hold my attention.

The narrator doesn't sound at all like a nineteen year old reminiscing about something that happened when she was thirteen. Throughout the narrative, she sounds about ten or eleven years old. This lack of authenticity in the narrator's voice makes it difficult to fully engage with the story.

With the exceptions of Mr Cat and Julian, the characterizations are one dimensional. When I think of well-developed characters like Meg Murry, Anne Shirley, Jo March, and Blossom Culp, in comparison, Jenny just feels flat, repetitive, uninteresting, and uninterested in the world around her. I couldn't wait to get away from her, not because she was unlikable, but because she was so boring. The lack of depth in the characters really detracts from the overall quality of the book.

Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin presents a captivating narrative rich in English myths, seen through the eyes of 13-year-old Jenny Gluckstien.

Jenny's life takes a drastic turn when her mother remarries and relocates their family from bustling New York City to a farm in the English countryside. Suddenly thrust into a new country with a stepdad and two stepbrothers, Jenny reacts in the worst possible way, becoming a nuisance to those around her.

Naturally, the manor and its surroundings are haunted by various creatures, including the ghost of a young girl who has been trapped on the estate for approximately 300 years. Jenny gradually finds herself drawn into the mysteries of Stourhead Farm and the nocturnal beings that inhabit it.

I firmly believe this is a story that will polarize readers. I, for one, am in the "loved it" camp. The tale unfolds at a slow and deliberate pace as we are introduced to Jenny and her life in New York. Jenny is a complex character, and I was impressed by how well Beagle captured the essence of a teenage girl with all her angst. Her passive-aggressive behavior as a way to cope with life's changes felt all too familiar.

The farm is delightfully haunted, with Beagle incorporating numerous local myths to bring Stourhead to life. Despite being published in 1999, the book has a timeless quality, as if it could have been written in any era before the internet age.

The story was truly enchanting. Beagle's beautiful and atmospheric prose transported me into the night world of Stourhead Farm. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Jenny, Tamsin, Mister Cat, and all the other creatures she encounters as she uncovers the secrets that are keeping Tamsin from moving on. I was truly sad when the story ended, as I was not ready to leave the magical world of Stourhead.

Utterly heartbreaking beautiful; but then, I expected no less from the author of The Last Unicorn, which is perhaps the most utterly heartbreaking beautiful book I know.

In some ways, Mr. Beagle seems to have been sharing notes on folklore with Susan Cooper. There is the encounter with the boggart, the profound English sense of place, with deep roots in local history and in the land, and the Wild Hunt hounding poor condemned souls through the stormy sky. However, this is not to say it seemed derivative. I'm not sure about the chronology, maybe she would have been the derivative one if any derivation were going on? Instead, it was thrillingly familiar.

If there's one thing Mr Peter S. Beagle does well, it's that ineffable, unmistakable sense of wonder that is the lifeblood of Fantasy. Meticulous worldbuilding won't save a story from falling flat if the joy and wonder in that world is lacking, as seen in GoT. What makes Beagle so remarkable is his ability to weld that wonder and magic with the subversively prosaic. In The Last Unicorn, we have sensible, scolding Molly Grue in stark contrast with the Unicorn, a creature straight out of a romantic song. There's a moment when the two first encounter one another, and instead of being awe-struck and tongue-tied, Molly tells it off. She really lays into her, shrieking and cursing for not coming sooner, when she was young and innocent and full of dreams, instead of now that she's old and tired and cynical. The magician is appalled, as is the reader. But the unicorn is gracious and lovely and says, in essence, "I'm here now, it's not too late," and Molly has the audacity to FORGIVE HER(!), and the reader is swept right back up into the enchantment again. Molly Grue is the touchstone of the fairy tale, rooting it in the commonplace without diminishing the numinous.

I'm digressing; but this entire book is like that, only turned on its head. Instead of bits of the "real world" peppering the fairytale to remind us it is also a human tale, we have an altogether "real world" human story into which fairyland intrudes. Actually, there's more than a bit of Molly Grue in Jenny, our heroine here. She is waspish, strong-willed, and slightly battered, altogether unawed by the supernatural as such but fiercely protective of the few she loves, living or dead. A more mundane, unromantic, human heroine could hardly be imagined. She snipes at her kindly stepfather and would rather die than admit that she regrets it afterwards. She doesn't scream when she hears voices under the bathtub because she doesn't want her mother to come in and find out she was squeezing a pimple. She gets into (hopelessly un-winnable, but still impressive) arguments with the Pooka, who is a mystery even to other mysteries, and puts on her best NYC gangster voice to scare poltergeists into submission.

And then she falls hopelessly in love with a centuries-old ghost, melted by the echo of a memory of a smile. The human heart is a funny, unpredictable thing. Peter S. Beagle gets that - so, so well.

Incidentally, this is also one of the few books of any sort that I've read with such a refreshing attitude toward love between two girls. Jenny never feels the need to explain what she means by love; and nor should she. It's just love for another person, pure and simple and complicated and beautiful.

I could go on, detailing the other things he gets and delivers so beautifully, for pages. Like the delicious pin-point accuracy of his cat characters, the horror of the main villain, and of course Tamsin herself, who is sheer loveliness - a bit like the unicorn, but more human, or the memory of humanity - and deserves a longer mention than I've given. And oh, I could write an entire review just on how he deals with time and memory, making it the very fabric of a ghost story. Because what is a ghost but a memory, the merging of past and present? What do you do with the vast expanse of years in between? And what happens if the memory... forgets?

Ahh, I'm getting shivery all over again, writing about it. Maybe later I'll come back and sort out these thoughts a bit more. For now, if anyone's still reading at this point, hopefully that rambling non-description will whet your curiosity enough to check out this perfect gem of a novel and see for yourself.

The ghosts in this story operate in a similar fashion as they do in Beagle's A Fine and Private Place. However, aside from that, the two books are rather distinct. The first-person teen narrative set in Dorset lacks the charm of a loner residing in an NYC graveyard. Nevertheless, I found myself liking the narrator well enough. Moreover, the task of reviving an old farmstead kept the adults in Jenny's life occupied and out of her hair.

Of course, it's the supernatural aspect that she discovers which holds the greatest interest. The ghost story is both tragic and romantic, yet the ghosts themselves lacked sufficient personality. I never developed a deep affection for Tamsin. The ghost who was her lover seemed rather one-dimensional, and the antagonist appeared somewhat pitiful.

The most vivid and enjoyable element in this book was the utilization of obscure British nursery bogeys: the pooka, the billy blind, the boggart, and Mrs. Fallowfield (whose true identity I shall not disclose). I have a hunch that Beagle intended to explore this further, but was perhaps restrained either by his editor or some ill-advised sense of practicality. What a pity.

I never thought that I could like a fantasy novel so much, even though normally I have no interest in it at all. The story that the author has chosen here is really charming.

This is not least due to the beautifully written language of the book. One enjoys page by page and it is hard to stop. The story is engaging and develops slowly but steadily, which I really appreciate. It gives one time to make friends with the characters, the human ones, the animal ones and those from other fields.

Despite a rather spare plot (which I did not find disturbing in any way), the story has carried me away and I could not get enough of the tales of the old ghosts of England.

I have not read anything for a long time that was so gentle and beautiful. It comes quite unobtrusively, yet it has really charmed me. Although I have always had difficulties with first-person narrations. The author has managed what I would not have thought possible, to transport me into this world. I suffered with Tamsin, was afraid of the Pooka and the Black Dog and laughed inwardly at the behavior of the Boggart.