Retelling of a traditional Scottish ballad.

The teenagers in this book make Madeleine L'Engle's families look realistic, which is saying something. I mean, yes, I too wish there were families where everyone quotes Shakespeare and knows basically everything and has lots of friends and goes to a school where you can do pretty much anything you want with many other beautiful geniuses but alas, I find it easier to believe in fairies, vampires and talking dogs than that world. However! That is not to say that this is a bad book, because it isn't - hell, I couldn't put it down. But what was it about? I still don't know. It was like a dream - I kept waiting for it to start making sense, for some plot to develop, for something explicable to happen and it never did and then it was over and, um, everything was okay again. This is good, I guess, because I was very unclear on when and if things had stopped being okay. Ten out of ten for confusion, but many points for addictive, beautiful writing.

4.5 - reminds me so much of her Tam Lin. The end feels really rushed, alas.

I am so not smart enough for this book. The literary references and astronomy were too overwhelming to me. Let's just get to it - is he or isn't he. The Giant Ants kept me off balance. There was an intimacy in their relationships that could have morphed into something else, especially for Becky and Gentian. The relationship between Dominic and the sisters sorta felt like a prequel to Witches of Eastwick.

3 and a half stars.

from my VOYA review 1998
"More a philosophical ponderance than a fantasy, the book's outright supernatural elements appear very late in the story. The devilish neighbor lurks, romantically promising some kind of despicable and/or amorous action. Intelligent and patient readers who enjoy the witty repartee will let the suspense lead them to its satisfying end. Some might criticize the Konigsburg-esque brilliant characters as unrealistic, but if ultra-bright girls like this don't really exist, this odd and wonderful book and others like it may just help to create some."

This book has perfectly captured exactly the kind of person I was in junior high school, (and the kind of friends I WISHED I had!) and what it's like to realize you're growing up and there's nothing you can do to stop it. From the book:
"...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. "

(August 21, 1999)

Speaking of YMMV authors...man, are there few others who both delight and frustrate me as much as Pamela Dean! As usual, when it comes to the day-to-day minutiae of life—school, eating, interpersonal relations—Dean can be incredibly, incredibly compelling. But when it comes to actual plot, well...

As with Tam Lin, this novel's pacing is oddly backloaded; the same thing happens where the supernatural element doesn't emerge until almost the end. I was actually warned me about this, although I didn't find it "perfectly appropriate"—again, I felt that the book may have in fact been stronger were it not a fantasy at all. Dean actually has some amusing meta-commentary on this criticism in JGR, so it's something she's obviously aware of; however, I still couldn't shake the feeling that the metaphor underlying the novel's conclusion and its fantasy element was much stronger than what actually, on a tangible level, occurred. It's like...you know how on the early seasons of Buffy, the MotW would often be used to address some metaphorical concern about high school? Like, the girl who felt invisible would actually become invisible? In Dean's case, the metaphorical message of the book—sometimes friendships fracture and the various parties drift apart and you don't realize it's happened until after it's over (especially when BOYS are involved)—would have I think worked better if they'd just literally been allowed to happen, rather than been attached to a fantasy plotline that, in my opinion, didn't really hold up. Though it would have been cool if the fantasy elements had just worked better, too.

All in all, I prefer Tam Lin, which has more rewards for lesser levels of frustration.

I loved the characters and their world, but be warned, the plot is even more rambling and nonexistent than usual for Dean, and at the end she tries to pull together a Diana Wynne Jones-style surprise twist ending that does not work at all. I would still reread it for the family and the house.

Spoilers, although the parts being spoiled are, imo, the least interesting parts.

This is an extremely weird book. On the one hand, it's a coming-of-age story, about three sisters (the titular plants are their names) having a more-or-less ideal -- well, it's ideal if you're a highly educated feminist -- childhood in 90s suburban Minnesota. The focus is mainly on 13-year-old Gentian, who is experiencing some typical problems for someone of that age. She's worried about the way her close childhood friend group seems to be drifting apart; she's having trouble understanding why her best friend has suddenly acquired a boyfriend; she fights with Juniper, who is 16, all the time. This part of the book is very well done: the characters are sometimes struck me as being a bit too adult, and they're all almost too intellectual and well-read, but they're all compelling and their interactions are acutely observed. There's not much of a plot, but at that age simply getting older provides enough of a narrative structure to keep things moving. The problem is that Dean shoehorns in a whole additional plot which is riddled with magic but doesn't make sense.

This part of the book revolves around Dominic Hardy, a handsome teenage boy who moves in next door and who all the sisters develop a crush on, but who is clearly a magical figure of some kind. We know from the beginning that his house appears virtually overnight and he doesn't have any parents, although he is capable of using magic to hide these facts. For about two-thirds of the book, he remains a moderately interesting mystery who simultaneously fulfills a useful role as a dangerous older boy, one who Gentian is, despite herself, attracted to. Even the fact that he only speaks in quotations and riddles adds to his appeal, as it sets him apart from other teenage boys and appeals to her intellectual side. Then in the last part of the book he suddenly takes on a much bigger role, but instead of resolving the mystery, Dean just piles on more questions that we never get answers to. For starters, why does nobody notice that the eerie words that the ouija board produces when Gentian and her friends use it are anagrams of Dominic's name? This happens not once but twice, and then is never referred to again. I suppose it's not immediately obvious, but I, the reader, figured it out: plus, Gentian knows that there's something strange about Dominic, since she is one of the only people who can remember that his house appeared essentially overnight (though why she is capable of remembering this is never explained either). Nor do we ever find out who or what Dominic is, or what he's trying to accomplish. Why does he want to build a time machine? Why does he need Gentian's help to build a time machine? Why does that involve trapping her in some kind of spell for months? Or, if the trapping is the point, why does he want to trap her? Why didn't her father, who it turns out knows something about magic (which is also left totally unexplained), try to intervene at all, or at least warn her? At the very end of the book he claims that this is something that Gentian had to work through by herself, which might make sense if it were simply a crush on an unsuitable older boy -- Gentian is intelligent and in many respects quite mature, and her parents clearly believe in a hands-off style of child-rearing -- but is crazy given that she has been essentially kidnapped by a powerful entity of a kind that she can't be prepared for because she doesn't believe that there is any such thing as magic.

In a way, I can see what Dean is trying to do: Gentian spends much of the book trying to come to terms with the fact that her friends are looking forward to not being children any more, and then adolescence hits her worse than any of them. But this could have been done just as easily without any magic, and it would have made a lot more sense.

I love this author but this is not one of her best books I think, because the plot is lacking... something. The individual scenes convey some really nice imagery but the overall plot definitely got lost somewhere. Although I like that her characters are smart, well-read, and logical.