2015 read #4: A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle.

A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
290 pages
Published 1960
Read from January 15 to January 17
Rating: ★★★★½ out of 5

"[T]he happiness of the unworthy and the happiness of the so-so is as fragile and self-centered and dear as the happiness of the righteous and the worthy; and the happiness of the living is no less short and desperate and forgotten than the joys of the dead." That, in one sentence, sums up what is so beautiful and so delicate and so inimitable about Beagle at his best. And this is Beagle in his finest form, at least to my tastes, surpassing even The Last Unicorn and "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros" (reviewed here). There is just a hint of midcentury propriety in Beagle's characterizations of Laura and Mrs. Klapper, otherwise well-realized characters who seem to have no direction in life beyond the love given them (or not) by men. Otherwise this tale is breathtakingly ahead of its time. I can't imagine anglophone fantasy daring to explore such a small, intimate enchantment again until the mid-'80s at the very earliest; my knowledge of literary fiction is more impoverished, but I also have a hard time believing such an achingly human exploration of love, mortality, and existence would be presented by any lit author in the medium of what is, essentially, a ghost story, not until the '90s or thereabouts.

All of which is a mess of adjectives and feeble attempts at capturing a feeling. This book made me glad I've spent the last ten years in New York, so that I could appreciate Beagle's evocations of June and July and August in the green and sweaty and earthy and beautiful city he depicts. Beagle brings a vivid sense of place and the personal, stirring life on every page. The better a book is, the worse equipped I feel to convey what made it so special. This is definitely one of those cases. It is a humble book, and sometimes the artifice of a young and ambitious author Making a Statement can elbow through, but I feel wholly inadequate to say why exactly I loved it so much.