A Fine and Private Place - Peter S Beagle

Wow, Nymeth and Chris...you were so right. This book caught my attention after their fabulous reviews, and I began the hunt for this particularly beautiful edition.

A Fine and Private Place is a book to be savoured, ready slowly, absorbing its subtle nuances and lyrical prose. The plot is an unsual one. The protagonist, Jonathon Rebeck, is a former pharmacist who, after a big night, wakes to find himself in a graveyard, one which he does not leave...for nineteen years. His only regular companion is a talking raven, who supplies him with food and the odd luxury item, like a book. But far from being a lonely experience, Rebeck spends his time greeting the newly dead as they wake to their new existence...that is, before they forget.

The dead in Beagle's world do not move on to an afterlife, or haunt the living. They remain bound to their mortal remains, as they slowly forget their lives and ultimately fade away. Rebeck takes it upon himself to greet these people, spending time with them in conversation, and occasionally a game of chess. It is in this quiet life of Rebeck's, that we meet Michael Morgan. Angry and bitter about his death, being poisoned by his beautiful wife Michael is determined to hang on to his ghostly existence and resist fading away. Michael and Rebeck then meet Laura Durand, killed by a truck and resigned to her new existence. Laura and Michael begin an unusual friendship, threatened all the time by their fading memories, especially Michael, who clings onto his former life, all the while losing the true memory of it.

Rebeck too forms an unlikely relationship, with the widowed Mrs Klapper, whom he meets as she visits her husbands grave. Rebeck is afraid to admit the truth to his new friend and what that might mean for his life there. But soon a greater threat emerges, as memories are forced to the surface and truths are revealed.

An unlikely story of friendship and the nature of living and dying, A Fine and Private Place is truly that. A quiet space in which the reader can be totally absorbed, with a delicate story, fragile characters and eerie yet charming location. Beagle's writing is just delicious, simple but elegant. A couple of passages really stayed with me:

"Man searches constantly for identity, he thought as he trotted along the gravel path. He has no real proof of his existence except for the reaction of other people to that fact. So he listens very closely to what people say to one another about him, whether it's good or bad, because it indicates that he lives in the same world they do, and that all his fears about being invisible, impotent, lacking some mysterious dimension that other people have, are groundless. That's why people like to have nicknames."

"I am tired , he thought. Maybe the heat is doing it, but I have sat through a good many summers here and never felt like this. I am tired of being helpful. I am tired of being comfortable. Why this should be I do not know, but my image of myself as an understanding old man, floating in kindness like a cherry in a sugared liqueur, is beginning to curl at the corners. I wish something would happen to me, something that would show me exactly how cruel and jealous and vengeful I can be. Then I could go back to gentleness because I chose it over brutality for its own sake, not because I didn't have the courage to be cruel. I might even like cruelty. I doubt very much that I would, but I ought to find out."

What makes this work an even greater feat is that Beagle wrote it while only 19 years of age. An absolute joy to read, this is a ghost story with a difference. Whole-heartedly recommended to all. I cannot wait to experience more of Beagle's writing.

Other blog reviews:
Rhinoa's Ramblings
Stuff as Dreams are Made On
Things mean a lot