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Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary

pamela dean

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Inspired by a traditional ballad, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary is the tale of a mysterious young man and three ordinary young girls, of ancient magic and the modern world.

Three sisters live comfortably with their Juniper, 16, who likes cooking and computer chats; Gentian, 13, who likes plays and astronomy; Rosemary, 11, who likes Girl Scouts. Enter Dominic, handsome as the night, quoting poetry, telling riddles, and asking help for a complex and fascinating science project.

Gentian isn't interested at first--she has her own life. But gradually her life, and her time, belong more and more to Dominic and his project, and her father begins to fear that the lad may be more than a charmer. . . .

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1998

This edition

Format
350 pages, Paperback
Published
June 12, 1999 by Tor Books
ISBN
9780312859701
ASIN
0312859708
Language
English

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About the author

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pamela dean

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Pamela Dean is an American fantasy author best known for Tam Lin, a novel that reimagines the classic Scottish fairy tale in a Midwestern college setting inspired by her alma mater, Carleton College. She has written six novels, including The Secret Country Trilogy, The Dubious Hills, and Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, and has contributed short stories to various anthologies.
A member of the influential writing group The Scribblies, alongside authors such as Emma Bull and Patricia Wrede, Dean was also a contributor to the Liavek shared-world anthologies and is part of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship. Her work is often praised for its lyrical prose, literary depth, and rich mythological influences.
Both Tam Lin and The Dubious Hills were nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She has also written essays and reviews, showcasing her deep engagement with fantasy literature. Readers drawn to intelligent, literary fantasy with a strong sense of folklore and academia will find much to love in her work.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 60 votes)
5 stars
19(32%)
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22(37%)
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19(32%)
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60 reviews All reviews
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twerking-corpse
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This was an expanded shorter story, and it bears some of the stretch marks of bloat. The last 25% was plotty, but most of the book is entertaining because of the characterization and idiosyncratic relationships. Eccentric parents and three extremely intellectual daughters, temporal weirdness and a weirdly handsome boy next door who only speaks in fairly esoteric quotations. If this had been a first novel from an unknown author, I don't think anyone would have touched it with a ten foot pole.

However, I did enjoy it. I would not seek to imitate the structure, or some other aspects of the plot, etc. if I were trying to get traditionally published. It basically does everything they warned us against at Odyssey. It was both enjoyable and super frustrating. The ending was middling satisfactory, but it read like a super long character sketch.
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kimwonshik
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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BEST BOOK OF 2013--which I think mostly indicates what terrible things I've been "reading" all year in my doldrums (with exceptions of Bryher and H.D. and Robert Duncan on H.D.). Still, this was staggeringly perfect and came at a perfect time. I was so ensnared and still so enspelled when I finished that I immediately went back to the beginning and read all my favourite parts again. As I wrote Moi, who gave the genius recommendation in the first place:
I stayed up till TWO last night finishing Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, which is my new favorite everything. I needed that book SO badly right now, it is so resonant: that feeling of having been in a spell, ensorcelled, in a time loop, while one's female friends wonder where the hell one has gone, and one knows all the while how inadequate one's sexist male companion really is, how inscrutable and unhealthy....yeah. Also, ASTRONOMY, my first love! And a cat.

Where was this book when I was 19? I would've felt a lot less lonely. And dated many fewer handsome jerks, possibly. Possibly maybe. And it links one through to so many other wonderful artists and thinkers (Laurie Anderson! Weetzie Bat/Witch Baby shout-out!) that one feels positively embraced and at home in a thickly peopled world of writers and friends.
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Ultraman_9823
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A novel I should have read as a teen - heavy on literature, philosophy, dialogue - but one that bothered me as an adult.

I'm not sure if this means that I've grown up or grown away but - the story behind these three sisters' day-to-day life was far more interesting than the actual big "PLOT" that was supposed to be the backbone of the story. I loved these young women and their thoughts and plans but not much more than that.

This is hard to explain because Pamela Dean is a great world-builder - I could imagine this household and its animals, cups of tea, gooey brownies and hobbies - but the why's and whereforetos just weren't that compelling. I can only compare it to watching a television drama where you love all the side characters and want to know what happens to them - but don't care much for the main leads.

I hope this review doesn't drive away potential readers. Really, I'm just trying to figure out why this was definitely not my cup of tea.
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Tatsude_M
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I can't remember when and where I first found this book -- maybe in the public library in middle school? Or, less plausibly, in the school library in high school? But I remember enjoying the first 80% very much, and on every re-read I have the same experience: long stretches of dreamlike weirdness, friendship negotiations, and family squabbles, culminating abruptly and oddly in a tiny climax, followed by a denouement in which all is explained, but not in a particularly satisfying way. So, typical Pamela Dean. You really have to be in it for the journey.
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mucilatos
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Actually, I never finished this book, but my daughter, for whom I bought it, slogged through because she kept hoping it would get better. It was set in Minneapolis (Prospect Park, I'm pretty sure) and my kids went to Open Schools too, so we thought we might enjoy it. During the portion when I was reading it aloud to her, there was a segment where the protagonist makes a cup of cocoa for a guest (or maybe herself). The description of her actions goes on for what seemed like forever, but may have only been a page or so. It is still our standard for bad, bad writing. And, as my daughter said, at the end, nothing really happened. A big disappointment and I can't believe so many people have rated it so highly.
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liakoto
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Wish someone had handed this to me as a kid -- whip-smart family unsuspectingly combats a time-traveling vampire-type creature in a world like our own. Fabulous literary references and small puzzles and puns to feel good about yourself for grokking.

I take small issue with the craft of the story; she spends ages prepping for the denouement, and it wraps up with little more than minor teenage angst. "You let him take advantage of me!" "Well, I'm a magician and put a spell on you ages ago. You were okay." "Oh. Well, thanks then." Gah. C'mon!

Given the world she constructed, though, I'm not sure how she could've made that general process stand up to the rest of the story -- cutting some of the largely repetitive (but oh, how meta) middle content to fit the pace of the final pages, maybe, although there's some good stuff in the beginning I would've been sore to miss.

A good gift for literary-minded youths.
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Natsugu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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“you won’t understand anything but it will be perfect” is the pamela dean guarantee!
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bLeSsEd14
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This is a funny sort of fantasy book. Until page 320 or so, it seemed like my personal-life fantasy. My fantasy about the family I wished I had as a child. My fantasy about the family I wish I had as adult. I wish I was part of a family where my husband & I read classic literature to each other while we washed dishes. I wish I was part of a family where we sat around reading Shakespeare plays in the evening. Sometimes I felt like I was too dumb for this book, and I found myself actively looking up vocabulary and famous quotations, but always I found the family and the relationships compelling. Like a dream of the perfect family life. After 300 pages, it suddenly turned into a fantasy novel, with classic magic-fantasy themes, and somehow I just couldn't stay with it. It seemed like the magic came out of nowhere & the characters responses to the magic seemed unbelievable - not the magic - just the way the characters reacted to it. I'm sorry I didn't like the end, because I really liked Tam Lin, and I really like the author. I wish that she had either written a non-fantasy fiction book about her fictional family, or somehow made the fantasy story more central to the book.
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