the first last unicorn and other beginnings peter s beagle

The event presages the course his life will take over the following months: a tranquil beginning, unexpectedly interrupted by turmoil.įarrell moves in with an old college buddy, Ben Kassoy, who's living with an older woman, Sia, about whom there is clearly more than meets the eye. There's more than a little foreshadowing in the fact his arrival is marked by an episode of violence, as he must fight off a hitchhiker he's picked up who's suddenly decided to go psycho.

He returns at last (driving, naturally, a beat-up VW microbus) to his Bay Area hometown of Avicenna, a fictitious stand-in for Beagle's native Oakland. But the overall result is top-drawer, comparable to the best of Tim Powers.īeagle's protagonist is Joe Farrell, a musician who's frittered away most of his post-collegiate years in boho style wandering the country and avoiding any semblance of settling down and taking on responsibility. It's a little overlong, and drags a bit in the middle. It can perhaps be interpreted as a parable about the role fantasy itself plays in our lives, specifically in the effort we put forth to act out our dreams as a way of filling the gap between who we are and who we wish we were.

That's exactly what it was, too Beagle hammered it out over an 18 year period between other work! It's a novel rich in atmosphere and anchored by the weight of centuries, as stylistically removed from The Last Unicorn as Beagle could make it. Beagle is not exactly fantasy's most prolific talent, and The Folk of the Air feels in a lot of ways like it was a difficult birth.

The first last unicorn and other beginnings peter s beagle