Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle
238 pages
Published 2016
Read from December 4 to December 7
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
I wonder how much more I would have enjoyed this novel, had I been more able to enjoy anything these days. That said, I don't feel like this was anywhere near Beagle's best. It left me feeling equivocal, bored even, especially during the first half, which felt at times closer to the urban fairy tales of de Lint than the sensitive and emotionally weighted musings I've come to expect from Beagle's longform stories. That first half read like a somewhat more intelligent but entirely formulaic urban fantasy of a fey being improving the tap water and ameliorating the Pacific Northwest weather with her mere presence, something I would have eaten up a couple years ago but can't get excited about anymore. Interludes of a main character, in his silver years, attaching himself to a blues-harmonica outfit did nothing to cultivate my interest. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't catch on to the identity of the magical stranger until roughly the halfway point, when a certain mythological connection was referenced by name. But that's also about when the book (or at least my interest in it) picked up noticeably.
What follows is a complicated knot of inadvertent betrayal, understandable hurt and pettishness, some light stalking, and a coda of heartbreaking realism. The last couple of pages at long last punctured my Trump Age anhedonia to move me the way I expect a Beagle novel to move me.
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