Present Writers: Pamela Dean

[mrissa]

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, and Nisi Shawl. This particular post should also bear the caveat that Pamela Dean is a dear personal friend of mine--although my love of her books predates that friendship by a decade or so. (And we've been friends for...gosh, I need to go lie down now, that is a long time.)

I do love her books. Unusually, I can say that I love every single one of her books. My favorite has shifted over the years, with each book taking a turn. Right now I think it's The Dubious Hills: the contained domestic nature of it, the acutely observed human relationships--including small children as full humans but not the same full humans as teenagers and adults--the way that the worldbuilding is folded into every line of the language. The first time doubt enters into the casual conversation, every single time I reread it, I get shivers at how deftly this is done. Pamela's work is not often praised for its structure, but The Dubious Hills is structured marvelously start to finish.

It is also quietly inventive. The things Pamela thinks of are not full of bells and whistles. They are in some ways the opposite of good elevator pitch material--because they are incredibly easy to make sound less ingenious and imaginative than they are. I don't know of another book that is more deep and more thoughtful about the powers and limitations of the protections offered by someone's love than Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. The coming of age story I know that is truest to my own personal coming of age is Tam Lin. And I end up pressing them into people's hands: just try it, I whisper. Just give it a try. Because "it's a ballad retelling" and "it's about the devil's science experiment with a teenage girl" don't really cover it, not in the slightest.

The long wait for a new Pamela book is almost over, and I am so very excited, because I know some things about Going North, and I know it's going to be amazing. And we are so very lucky that she is present and doing these things, and I can't wait to see what next.

Comments

[alchimie]

She is hands down one of my all-time favourite writers; I have read some of her work (Tam Lin and the Liavek short stories) so many times I am in danger of wearing them out. I may dissolve with joy when I finally get to read Going North.

[sartorias]

Excellent post. My favorite Deans also shift about, depending on where my head is at with rereading. I come back most often to Tam Lin, which is a story I love and also the college experience I craved but didn't get to have, except vicariously through that book.

But then there's The Dubious Hills which is wonderful for very different reasons.

[lcohen]

i still remember the amazing experience of reading tam lin--so like and so unlike my college experience, and how i couldn't read anything else for a month because it didn't measure up.

[mrissa]

It was very, very like my college experience, but I knew that going in; it was part of how I chose a college. When something was dubious during freshman move-in, I muttered, "I should have gone to Harvard," and my mother was worried for weeks that I was regretting my college choice, because she didn't realize it was a literary reference.

[landingtree]

One of my local second hand bookshops had the first two Secret Country books. The third is not to be found in any of them. Since then I've been wandering around muttering "All may yet be very well" without having more than the faintest idea what it means. Though I'm actually quite glad I've been able to cherish my burning desire to find out what happens next for a while, I may give in and resort to internet ordering any day now. Not many books delight me like hers do. Some strike me as more polished wholes, but that isn't the same -- I quibble with this and that and wonder about a third thing, and that seems part of what they're made for. Conversations. (She's so good at writing conversation, too).

[mrissa]

Thank you SO MUCH for telling me this, because--this is the experience I had too! But 15-20 years ago!

The Whim of the Dragon was not reissued until after I'd gone years without it AND just after I'd met Pamela and gotten to be her friend. So I read it through the cracks in my fingers, terrified that it would disappoint and also that it would be so awkward with my new friend if I thought this book was no good.

I won't tell you anything but that it sticks the landing. But I hope you have a chance to enjoy it very, very soon.

[owldaughter]

I am so glad to hear that Going North is on its way. And this prompted me to finally actively track down The Dubious Hills, which is now digitally available, and so I have that in my queue.

Tam Lin was my first Pamela Dean love. I reread all my Dean books regularly. They're so good.