Book: Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip
Published: 1997
Book Trope: Tam Lin
Rating: 8.5 of 10
The Plot:
Rois is the herb-woman of the village, knowing the woods in-and-out. Her elder sister Laurel is the practical one, caring for the family. Come spring, she will marry her childhood sweetheart. But autumn is here first. It brings back Corbet, the long-forgotten heir to the Lynn estate bordering the woods. A disastrous love affair follows: both sisters fall for Corbet, who seems to be under a generations-long curse.
My Thoughts:
Trust McKillip to take the old Tam Lin legend, and turn it on its heel, give it a makeover unlike any other version! Almost, almost, the suspense is unbearable. In fact, it’s a choke-hold: What is the true nature of Corbet’s curse? Why is he back? Which sister does he really love? Can Rois save Corbet? Will she want to save him, even if he doesn’t love her back and has literally destroyed her family? There were moments I grew to hate Corbet. Corbet is helpless against the tide of the curse, against the pull of the fey woods. I understood that, and I pitied him, but I also hated him.
The other thing that McKillip does so well is to mix these supernatural elements with the daily ordinary, so that it all becomes entirely too possible. It’s possible to fall into an other world and think it a dream. It’s possible to find odd marks on the grassfloor and think it the pawprints of a magical creature. It’s possible to lose your way in the forest and call it sleepwalking. You will never know the whole answer, and it will keep you wondering long after the riddle is forgotten.
That’s McKillip for you.
The wood darkened; the winds poured from every direction, not wintry yet, still carrying scents of ripe apple, blackberry, warm earth. But they sang of storm and bare branches and cold, shriveled days. They were the harvest winds; they came to carry away the dying, sweep the earth for the dead. I had never heard them so clearly before; they seemed to have their separate voices, each wind its separate shape. I huddled in the leaves beside the well, watching the world darken, the moon rise slowly above the trees, leaves flying like flocks of birds across it.
