Review by Booklist Review
When Beagle's A Fine and Private Place (1960), a story of two ghosts in love, emerged virtually simultaneously with other brilliant debuts by Philip Roth, Reynolds Price, and Wendell Berry, he was hailed as one of their cohort of promising American novelists. The Last Unicorn (1968), however, disclosed him delving more deeply into fantasy (the unicorn is the protagonist, not a metaphor), and he was critically drummed out of the troop. He hardly lost his talent, though, and ever since Last Unicorn, one of the most beloved fantasies ever written, fantasy critics and readers have treasured his work, all the more so because he isn't prolific. For all their variety--four fables, a children's story for all ages, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, an old tar's tall tale, a sequel to one novel ( Last Unicorn) and a prequel to another ( The Innkeeper's Song, 1993), and the germ of a prospective witch novel--all 10 stories in this book are lucid and refreshing as spring water, full of amusement, humanity, and wisdom. Perhaps Beagle is incapable of writing genuinely dark fantasy, but his tall tale Salt Wine touches the tonalities of R. L. Stevenson in The Bottle Imp and W. W. Jacobs in The Monkey's Paw, while on the other end of the spectrum, the Last Unicorn follow-up Two Hearts is like Kenneth Grahame's Reluctant Dragon with greater gravitas. --Ray Olson Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This story collection from fantasy legend Beagle offers a sublime mix of reprints and original works. "Two Hearts," the coda to his masterwork, The Last Unicorn, is a sweet, slight story sure to leave fans hungry for the novel's promised sequel. Yet even Beagle's lesser efforts contain delicate shadings and subtle prose. The brief selections grouped as "Four Fables" pay tribute to George Ade and James Thurber, while the tantalizing "El Regalo," a bittersweet tale of two Korean-American children with strange powers, deserves to be expanded to novel length. The volume closes with "A Dance for Emilia," which Beagle in his introduction calls "as autobiographical as anything I've ever written" (quite a statement from the author of the autobiographical I See by My Outfit). It is a tapestry woven of love, friendship, art and a very special cat. This book is a fitting tribute to a beloved author who one hopes has several more novels left in him. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
