Book Tamers| book reviews

Peter Beagle is commonly associated by Fantasy literature readers with the novel The Last Unicorn- considered to be one of the ten best Fantasy novels ever written. I haven’t read that one though, this being my first encounter with the author, so you will have to take their word for it.

A Fine and Private Place is his first novel and the fact that it rapidly became a classic of the genre is indeed to be appreciated, as Peter Beagle was only nineteen when he wrote the book.

The story begins with an evil-toadied raven which brings food to Mr. Rebeck, a chemist who has been living in a cemetery for twenty years. The reason for which he is there is his fear of the living people. His company is only represented (besides the talkative raven) by the spirits of the dead, before they vanish forever, once having forgotten how it felt to be alive. Two of them are the ghosts of Laura and Michael who meet in Mr. Rebeck’s cemetery in order to do something they couldn’t do during their lifetime.

Then there is also Ms Klapper, the widow who runs into Mr. Rebeck on her way to her former husband’s grave. Her apparition will turn Mr. Rebeck’s calm and hidden world upside-down.

The two pairs are seen in an antithetic manner: Mr. Rebeck hides away from life while Ms Klapper is afraid of dying. Michael and Laura, although they both shared a tragic end, look upon afterlife in different ways: Michael desperately tries not to forget the past, while Laura wants to leave the cemetery as soon as possible. However, their conversations about life, the exterior world and about love will reveal to them that their past, hopes and ambitions make them quite similar.

Peter Beagle does a great job in shaping his characters. The narrative begins slowly, with news about the exterior world brought by the raven and continues with its influences on Mr. Rebeck’s life. Even though at times sad, the story leads to a happy ending for both of the worlds. The love story is very original, taking in consideration other existing ones. The dialogues, although sometimes slightly artificial, sustain some interesting ideas about symbols connected to life and inter-human relationships. And the raven (whose black humor reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s style) is more than a bridge between the world represented by the cemetery and the one outside it. It is a bridge between the world of the living and the one of the dead, between the story and the reader, as the whole action seems to be seen through its dark eyes.

Written by Alin