I found this book more annoying than anything. It was too mundane for fantasy, and too fantastic for good fiction. I certainly can't imagine recommending it to any young person that I know, nor would I consider it for most adults. Sorry. Just not my cup of tea, obviously.

This book is just too complex to save in my head until I'm done with rereading it. And I must say, I just didn't get vast chunks of it when I read it 10 years ago, because so much of the story (there is a story there, really!) is so subtle and so obscure that if one doesn't catch the meaning in the quotes and (literal) fortune cookies, then what is going on won't be obvious until the end.

Gentian lives a complex but healthy existence with her sisters and parents, studying astrononmy, going to an awesome unconventional high school, having friends over to spend the night, and generally grappling with the particular difficulties adolescence presents for someone intelligent and rational who resents their reason being interfered with by their emotions. (I am not that person at all, so she reads as an alien to me, but quite an interesting one.) A house is built next door; for Gentian it takes only a few weeks, but others insist that it took half the summer, and that's the first of many little holes in reality scattered throughout the book. Suddenly Gentian's telescope won't work -- it only shows her the house next door. The teenage boy who lives next door shows up; he's named Dominic, and is breathtakingly beautiful, and speaks almost entirely in quotations... because he is, literally, Satan (a Miltonic Satan, mind you, not a B-movie version), and Satan cannot create, he can only imitate or adapt.

So Dominic moves in next door and sets about ruining everything he can touch; by 1/3 of the way through the book he's already put the sisters even more at odds than usual, and has brought up the race card between Gentian & her friend Alma in an attempt to upset their relationship. Gentian's telescope only works when her friend Becky is present, so she's feeling part of her identity as an astronomer threatened by her inability to star-gaze. Mrs. Zimmerman, the only other person who realises how quickly the new house was built, identifies Dominic without realising it, saying that he spends each night "walking up and down, and to and fro" on the street in front of the house. Dominic hates _humans_, all humans; he's a Miltonian Satan, after all, and he can't forigve humanity for the grace they receive; there's a great scene in which he tells Gentian (in quotations, of course) how he hates the entire human species and she completely fails to get it.

Reading this book earlier today I felt like it was just so-so, but now that I'm putting it all down I think it might actually be amazing in its exploration of what real evil is and how it manifests. Gentian is sympathetic and yet she keeps making these tiny sacrifices of her self; she is enamoured with Dominic and so when Alma reveals the terrible things he was almost-saying (but not ever outright; not subtle enough that way) she is outraged and yet she doesn't want it to be true so she lets it go.

The remainder of the book develops in much the same way; Dominic subtly enthralls Gentian and both of her sisters, and finally puts them to work building a time machine for him in their attic. First Rosemary and then Juniper realise that Dominic is taking advantage of them and break away, leaving Gentian still obsessively working in the attic, unaware that she is losing months of her life in what seems to her to be an endless January. Even once she becomes aware of how much time she's lost, she continues working on the time machine, easily convinced by Dominic's argument that only by finishing it can she repair the damage she's done to her relationships and schoolwork. It isn't until Dominic demands the two objects most central to her identity -- her telescope, and a poem written by her best friend -- that she finally refuses him, and in doing so finally breaks his hold over her.

Despite all of the wonderful things in this book, I still find myself unsatisfied with the ending. Why didn't Gentian's friends intervene to help her? Why did her parents let her lose 10 months of her life to Dominic? The book suggests a combination of his time-magic and their belief that she has to solve her own problems, but this seems like a harsh way to treat one's 14-yr-old daughter. If Gentian was presented as having really learned something from being left alone to grapple with the consequences of her poor decisions I might be happier, but she's left resentful and confused, although relieved that her best friend hasn't given up on her. I really, really wanted another chapter or so of processing on her part, so I could see how she's been changed by all of this, and get some assurance that she's not permanently damaged. Without that resolution I find myself uncomfortable and sad, worried about Gentian's ability to reconnect with the ordinary world, and intensely angry with her parents for showing so little concern. I am still fond of the book, and glad I read it, but I'm not sure when I'll read it again; the ending is just too painful for me.

19 dec 2012: Just pulled it down to look for a quote, and ended up rereading bits. I think my real problem with the book is that there is neither catharsis nor eucatastrophe.

This was so frustrating. At first I though this was the perfect book to describe what it felt like to be a girl in the early teens, even if the characters were well-read and articulate well past the point of realism. The intensity of interests and friendships, the moodiness, the growing self-consciousness, the tension between the desire for autonomy and the expectation of support and protection, the discomfort and fascination of emerging sexuality, the growing understanding of how gender roles will affect you no matter what kind of woman you aspire to be - all this was so perfectly captured I wanted to walk around making people read it.

But then, the author seems to realise she has almost expended her publisher’s word count on a character study and shoehorns the entire plot into the last two chapters even though it doesn’t fit the rest of the book very well at all.  It could have been a metaphor for how teenage girls can lose themselves in bad relationships with manipulative, controlling men - except that Gentian is never smitten enough with Dominic to make this fit. She may fancy his physical appearance and like his attention but she certainly doesn’t idolise him, and in fact seems to dislike him so much that magic is the only explanation of how he traps her into working for him. His subtle attempts to manipulate her away from her friends with faintly implied racism and so on, would be cleverly done if only Dean could bring Gentian to fall for it or excuse it in her head. (Although I guess she effectively condones it by not cutting off contact, she has to explain it to herself as him being perhaps mentally ill rather than the usual romantic excuses of him being tortured or sensitive) Instead Dominic’s character is written as so obnoxious and barely intelligible that that the audience can’t see his appeal. Also, it is baffling as to why he needs the help of the three teenage sisters. In one version of the ballad in which this is based it is to seduce them, but that’s explicitly ruled out here. The strong hint that he is the Devil, trying to reach back into time to reverse his fall, would be a fantastic plot device, but completely disconnected from the plot and as a motive would be surely sad and sympathetic rather than sinister? Anyway, he just disappears for stupid reasons, so we never find out anything more about him or his motives.

The behaviour of the parents makes no sense. They may believe in giving their daughters an unusual amount of freedom, but in the beginning of the book they set curfews and chores. In the last two chapters they are suddenly OK with their 14-year daughter missing almost a whole year of school while under the magical control of a malign spirit they’ve let into the attic? They give her no guidance and offer no real help. It is an exasperating plot hole that Dean has tried to plug badly, and betrays the characterisation that is the strength of the book.
Add to this the wasted opportunity and of Dominic never actually appearing in rehearsals for the school play or meeting Becky for their implied confrontation, despite foreshadowing, and  I get the feeling something went out of kilter with the writing of this book. Dean must have realised she wasn’t going to make a deadline or a word count and the book was published with an ending that didn’t fit at all. These flaws are exactly the same as the flaws of Dean’s earlier novel, Tam Lin (the strong points are also very similar - wonderful characterisation of a certain kind of young woman, the delight of reading and learning ), but unfortunately magnified past overlooking. It’s so sad and such a waste of a wonderful beginning. Still, I give it 4 stars for being two chapters away from being the perfect YA book.

As far as plot goes, this book is a really slow burn. Right up to the end it's mostly slice of life, with only the occasional hint of blink-and-you'll-miss-it magic realism sprinkled in here and there. As a matter of fact, structurally it's somewhat similar to n   Among Othersn, and I'm trying to figure out why this book didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth the way Among Others did.

I think that a good part of that is the portrayal of girl-girl friendships, and Gentian's relationship with the Giant Ants (why did they call themselves that, though?). One of the things I quickly got really sick of in Among Others was Mori constantly looking down her nose at anyone who didn't share her interests; each and every girl in her school was a "moron" as far as she was concerned, even the ones who were supposed to be her friends. In this group, everyone has different interests, different opinions, and different plans for the future—and that's okay. They might not always agree with each other, but they do hear each other out and respect each other's opinions and right to be different.

(Oh yes, and not to mention: they have actual conversations with each other, and they talk about something other than boys. Sure, boys do frequently feature in their discussions—these are teenage girls just hitting puberty, after all—but they also talk about their hobbies, their families, schoolwork, the fun activities they plan to do this week... The friendship is there for its own sake, not just as a placeholder until somebody decides to mate.)

The other good part was Dominic, who provided a truly chilling portrayal of how relationship abuse starts out. When Gentian first met him, he seemed just a little bit off, but still mostly harmless. Then, he started to rub her friends the wrong way, but his casual racist or sexist remarks were always brushed off as "He just doesn't know he's being offensive" or "Oh come on, it wasn't that bad." Then, though, as he slowly brought Gentian and her sisters into his orbit, he laid demands on their time and attention that precluded their previous hobbies, and deliberately, systematically isolated them from their friends and family members (even going so far as to cancel plans to spend time with their friends on their behalf without consulting them!). By the time that Gentian finally "wakes up", she's lost nearly a year of her life, alienated her friends, missed the astronomical event of a lifetime, and even would have let her cat starve to death if one of her sisters hadn't started feeding her in Gentian's stead. Even though it ends on a hopeful note, with Dominic banished and Gentian taking the first steps to put her life back together, it's implied that she's going to have to put in a lot of time and effort on the road to recovery. To top it all off, it's revealed at the end that Dominic was (depending on your interpretation) either some sort of fey creature, or the literal devil. In any number of other stories, this guy would have been the love interest.

One of the main cons was that in a lot of places, the story tends to drag just a little bit too slow. The whole Dominic storyline doesn't really pick up until somewhere in the final 20% of the book. In addition...



She's doing it again. Pamela Dean is doing it again.

Gentian looked at Rosemary. "What is dessert?" she said. "Ice cream," said Rosemary.

"No, he didn't—not until 1954. Oh, well. Maybe there really wasn't anybody decent to talk to." "Maybe they didn't want to have philosophical discussions at dinnertime," said Gentian. "I wouldn't."

"I should be heading home, Gen," said Alma, regretfully. "I'll walk you," said Gentian. "It's pretty dark."

"I guess Jane Goodall wasn't a real girl either," said Gentian. "Define your terms," said Becky, sitting up suddenly. Everybody groaned again.

"Last week when I was coming home from Girl Scouts." "Rosemary. Did he offer to sell you something?"

"Well, not from where I stand, or you either." Erin was an agnostic; Gentian was an atheist. "But—I guess I think of stuff like astrology as superstition rather than as religion. And going off the deep end like this about a ouija board, when she and Alma spent an hour telling me that only fundamentalists believe that things like that, or tarot, or whatever, work at all, let alone that they're of the Devil—if that's not superstition, what is it?" "Fright, I'd say," said Erin.

Of course, the quote-mashing seems to be Pamela Dean's signature style of English-mangling, but there are others:

Dominic picked it up, sent her a grin that made her knees feel odd, and, examniing the ball with momentary puzzlement, looked vastly entettained and said to Alma, "Should you like to use this in its intended game for a little?"

Dominic laughed. Gentian jumped; it was the most uneXpected sound she could remember hearing in her entire life.

Junie rhapsodized about the moonlight and the leaves and the wind for several, paragraphs.

And, irony of ironies:

Within five messages she remembered why she didn't do this more often. Nobody could spell, punctuate, or write a sentence longer than five words unless they did it by leaving out the period and sailing gaily on to the next five-word sentence.

You want your self-righteous complaints about teenagers' online illiteracy to ring a lot less hypocritical? Learn how to use your Enter key.

What a fun book! I did wonder occasionally while I read if there was ever going to be any plot, but the character elements were so delightful that it really didn't matter. (The plot finally did show up in the last 80% of the book). My brain loved this book so much that it made itself a little movie of it that it played for me as a dream, with Amy Pond and the Eleventh Doctor as the parents, and my own youngest daughter, aged fourteen, as the main character, Gentian. I am glad I bought this book so I can reread as needed for a quick hit of happiness.

a hot mess.

While I read this book, I was interested in it about half the time. I liked a lot of the characters, but I was a bit annoyed at how sophisticated they all were. There wasn't much building of suspense; the plot developed very slowly. The ending was a bit disappointing, especially considering how short the climax was compared to the length of the rest of the book.



Relatively early on in the book, this one guy asks the main character and her sisters if they'd like to build a time machine with him. They say yes. But they don't get around to building it until near the end of the story. The climax of the book is the main characters building the time machine, but they never complete it. We never even found out what that one guy wanted to build a time machine for in the first place. Or if we did I somehow missed it.



The climax of the book, though short, was certainly interesting and engaging. Even so, it was the level of excitement I'd rather see in the pages leading up to the even-more-exciting climax.

I dunno. I guess this book just wasn't enough for me. I thought I'd give it three stars if I were impressed by the ending. But I was not.

……….hmmm. somewhere between 3 and 4. I love Pamela deans writing but this one didn’t inspire the rabid derangement that tam Lin made me experience. It had about the same ratio of Shakespeare quotes, descriptions of food and hideous outfits to magic as that book does but I think the folktale elements worked a lot better there than here. I just found myself……confused tbh, in the way that fire and hemlock confused me the first time. not in a cute way like a literally what actually happened way.

also the main character is an eighth grader who is obsessed with astronomy and while that was cute in its own way it also grew wearing pretty quickly

n  "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Arthur Conan Doylen

Ah, if only more YA novels were like this one, a book peopled with smart, intelligent teen girls who enjoy spending time with their parents (I did mention this is a fantasy, didn't I?) Girls who discuss philosophy, literature, religion, and science instead of boys . . . until one particular boy shows up: a freakishly intelligent dreamboat of a boy who speaks mostly in quotations, and . . .

It was odd that he should have read so many of the things her family and friends had.

He subtly worms his way into the good graces of three sisters, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, though thirteen-year-old Gentian seems most vulnerable to the boy's wiles. She helps him build a time machine in the family's attic, discovering too late that there are many ways to travel through time.

This is an odd read that has mesmerized me twice now. I almost never reread books unless I've assigned them five stars, yet this one was, and still is, only a four star tale for me. And, yet . . . I'll undoubtedly read it again.

Weird . . .

4.5

This is one of those books you love (if you love it) for the feel of it, not so much for the plot. It's a modern retelling of an old Scottish folk ballad, involving either the devil or a fine young man, and a marriage or a trap, but either way a set of riddles which the heroine of the ballad needs to solve in order to win his heart/escape. You see how it's already a bit confusing.

In this story, it's 1990's Milwuakee, and the plants of the title are three sisters, with Gentian, the middle at 13, our teller of the tale. These three girls are smart, almost painfully so, with witty parents and lackadasical schooling, though of course they are all self-educated and hard working little smarties, who can quote Shakespeare, Keats, and historical astronomers with equal panache. The devil lies in the form of Dominic, a beautiful, mysterious boy who moves in next door and speaks entirely in epigrams, which fortunately annoys Gentian as much as it does the reader, so it's not so bad.

Gentian, her equally precious friends, and her erudite family, come together in a very specific kind of world, which I admit I am not quite smart enough to completely follow. The book walks a very fine line between being engaging and obnoxious, and occasionally tips over onto the wrong side. However, Gentian is practical enough to be engaging, and by and large, the book makes me wish that when I was a smart young girl (as we all know I was), I had friends and family as indulgent and eccentric as Gentian's own. This is why the book is one I love and read over and over - because despite the essentially confusing and pointless plot, the characters and world they inhabit is fascinating to me. If you read widely, considered yourself an outsider kid, and wished you had a telescope dome in your attic so you could stay up all night and watch the stars (and had parents and a school that didn't mind if you didn't make it to class on time, or at all), then this book will probably enchant you. Otherwise, you may want to punch it in the nose, which is a pretty reasonable option as well.

I'm a little torn on where to rate this book, I think because there's a small gap between my enjoyment level during parts of the story and what I think the book is trying to do.

Let me just get my negative comments out of the way: I found this story to be a little slow at times. There's not a ton of plot, and when we're kind of meandering around and getting inundated with literary references and astronomical facts, I would find myself really wanting to skim through to the next chapter. I also think the main conceit feels a little superfluous? I understand that it "needed" to be there for the purpose of the retelling of this Scottish ballad, but I do wonder if the story would function just fine without it. Perhaps I'll have a more specific note in the spoilers section.

I think that this is a story that really rewards you getting comfy and sitting with it for a bit. The slower pacing gives you ample time to spend with the characters and feeds into that autumn/winter vibe. And I really loved the characters, they seemed like real people and the relationship dynamics between everyone felt so realistic and made me nostalgic for my own childhood. I particularly liked the depictions of the family fights, partially because they often came with these little nods towards the parents' relationship, which was quietly cute and loving and romantic.

The other thing that I just really loved was the way Pamela Dean wrote and captured childhood and coming-of-age (I'm nothing if not consistent). I love the conflicting emotions with these young characters who have mapped out their entire identities at the ripe age of 13-14, and yet they're so confused as to why their friendships are changing as they're growing up and their preferences are changing and they're becoming interested in boys (yuck). They even call it out: "Everything's changing so much. I don't even know how tall I am or what size bra I wear, and when I had that cold last week I got out a Goosebumps book to read, and it was so bad I wondered if somebody had taken the inside away and substituted a different one."

Now, this story is mainly about a group of young girls growing up in the early 1990s, so unfortunately I couldn't totally relate to their group dynamic, but it still gave me a lot of nostalgia, and I think if you can relate to those things, it would REALLY be a comfort read for you. Bonus points if you can appreciate literary references (especially Shakespeare) and astronomy; those things are beyond my paltry biology education.

One other thing that I wanted to point out was that I liked how feminism was incorporated in the girls' characters. It's reflected in their philosophies, their heroes, their clothes, how they think about boys, and not only that, but each girl has a slightly different idea of what feminism should mean.

Okay, now for a few thoughts with spoilers:

I'm on the fence about how much the paranormal aspects added to the story. On the one hand, I thought Dominic's lines got incredibly aggravating, only speaking in quotes and riddles that barely made sense in his conversations. On the other hand, it's played close(ish) to the chest for so long that I wasn't actually sure it was even going to be paranormal, so when the "time travel" happened, I was honestly kind of shocked. I also liked the "time travel" as a metaphor for getting lost in a relationship: Gentian drops her friends and hobbies because she gets a little too obsessed with a boy, and then realizes that's bad.

And, last thing, I love love love the relationship between Gentian and Becky and their ending. They're best friends, but their relationship starts to falter a little bit, and they don't understand why, which is kind of heartbreaking because they still want to be best friends. Then they really break up when Gentian gets lost with Dominic. At the very end, after Gentian escapes, she reads a poem from Becky that describes what makes friendships different from romantic relationships and so very important:

"Some say we picture lovers face to face
Entwined, intent each on the other alone,
While friends are side by side intent, and gaze
Upon some truth each thought himself to own
Sole, strange, and lonely: Friendship is that wood
In which run rank all flowers we thought rare,
In which at first aghast we stared and stood
To see two phoenix dazzle the dim air.
But when I think of you in terms of these
Symbolical fine patterns, full of grace,
We are not side by side but back to back,
Intent upon two mirrors where we gaze:
But I see your face multiplied in glass,
And you see mine, through those infinities."

And Gentian picks up the phone to call her.