The Line Between by Peter S. Beagle Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Line Between
Book Review: Some Good Stories, Some Great Ones
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm a pretty typical Peter Beagle fan in that my first encounter with Peter Beagle's writing was reading The Last Unicorn. Over the nearly forty years since then, I have looked forward to any new publication of his.
I'm not, in general, a huge fan of fantasy novels or stories. Beagle, however, does a better job than almost anybody else of creating fantasy that is realistic enough to be believable. His fantasies seem natural to me; at the same time, there are enough surprises to keep the reader (at least if I'm the reader) interested.
There are some real gems here. El Regalo, for which Beagle first considered the title My Stupid Brother Marvyn the Witch, is an absolute delight, hilarious and terrifying by turns. Schmendrick (my favorite Beagle character), Mollie Grue, King Lir, and the unicorn reappear in Two Hearts, which is a tale well-told indeed. Salt Wine is a wonderful story of the price that must be paid for any happiness.
I'd say that the least successful piece here is A Dance for Emilia, which, of course, has already been published in book form. The fantasy here seems forced to me, while, paradoxically, I don't think that there's enough of it. In fact, the whole story seems forced. Both it and Mr. Sigerson seem to have too little content to justify their length.
Book Review: like fine wine: Beagle's writing keeps improving as he ages
Summary: 4 Stars
(This review previously appeared in the bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, www.mythsoc.org)
This long-anticipated new collection of short stories by Peter S. Beagle fulfilled this reader's hopes. Readers can see the culmination of a long life of writing distilled here, as his many styles and interests come together in one book rather like an apartment building between the worlds, with each story exploring new quirky characters inhabiting each room, whether temporarily or for generations.
Each story is prefaced by a Beagle-penned paragraph describing how it came into being. Allowing the reader in on its creation in this way adds to the joy and anticipation of entering the story. In particular, the preface to Two Hearts, a short-story sequel to The Last Unicorn, entices and charms, as Beagle explains how he moved from a stance of `a sequel can't, and won't, be done' to getting slowly snookered into writing it by his friend and publicist. How? By enticing Beagle to write one new story based in that world. Once there, of course, four of the main characters happened to show up. Then Beagle fell in love with the new main character, a feisty young woman named Sooz -- so now, an entire novel may be lurking in our future. Hooray! Readers are similarly led to anticipate more stories following the siblings in El Regalo, to be collected in a book entitled "My Stupid Brother Marvin the Witch." Who can resist a title like that?
Other stories in the collection showcase Beagle's wide-ranging ability to combine the magickal with the ordinary, while playing with several literary styles as seen across his earlier work, from his motorcycle travel saga I See By My Outfit to the somewhat tongue-in-cheek Folk of the Air. One can also see the aging man as author of these stories, with the wit and wisdom of a grandfather amusedly musing over his life and the many types of fictional worlds he's entered earlier. "Gordon, the Self-Made Cat" was originally a humorous morality tale for his children while small. "Four Fables" is a paean to his own exposure to serious fables as a child. (He also drops the tantalizing historical tidbit that Aesop was done in...). "Mr. Sigerson" pays homage to Sherlock Holmes. "Quarry" brings back the world of The Innkeeper's Song, in order to answer the question posed to him about how Soukyan originally met his shapeshifting fox companion. Since Beagle had no idea how to answer, he wrote this story to find out. Quarry contains an encounter with houses that are not houses, but something else, something malevolent posing as the familiar in order to lure in the prey... a motif that I must admit I found unforgettable, as it echoes some of my deepest childhood nightmares.
These stories all have a sense of continual discovery and wonder. Even when a tale has a twist to the end like the best-planned mysteries, you get the feeling that Beagle was surprised and delighted by it too. These stories do not feel contrived, but organic, flowering madly where and how they will. And the characters are what drives them. One of my favorites, Salt Wine, is told in the voice of the crusty old sailor Ben Hazeltine, "not some seagoing candy-trews dandy Captain Jack...I can promise you" (p 135), who gets involved in a business deal involving a recipe conned out of a merrow. And the final tale, "A Dance for Emilia," is a magical-realism homage to friends who have passed on too soon.
These are tales no young person could have penned. It takes the wisdom and the pain of years to bring about this sort of poignant appreciation, this combination of gentle love and no-B.S. crankypants humor. It's a beautiful collection, and one that provides thrilling anticipation of more to come. Like Theodore Sturgeon before him, Beagle is proving himself a master bard whose tales use wild rolling imagination to kindle the reader's heart.
Book Review: Great Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter S. Beagle's one of my new favorite writers and this book has a great collection of stories. He's able to write in a lot of styles, and no matter if he's writing from the perspective on a child or adult, his insights and use of words are always witty and honest. Book Review: The Line Between
Summary: 5 Stars
Short stories are a tricky thing to write - many authors open their own collections with a note about how silly they were to attempt the form. Not surprising, since a short story is not simply a novel with the details cut out. Short story writing requires a precise sense of pacing and an almost directoral view of the subject matter. There are not hundreds of pages to develop characters and create mood; the best the short story writer can do is point out to you the defining moments of a character or a scene and hope you can keep up. Short fiction is most often effective to offer a setup leading to a quick plot twist or a startling ending, not for world-building or profound observations on the human psyche.
That said, the depth of feeling contained in the latest Peter Beagle book is astounding. Twice as much when you consider that this is a short story collection, not a novel. No story spans more than forty pages - a few run no more that five, but many have their own emotional resonance most novelists dream of.
There are plenty of funny, quick reads throughout the collection too. In Gordon, the Self-Made Cat a mouse with no desire to play the traditional role of bait earns his cat card and the respect of his fellow felines. A set of four fables, while feeling a little rushed in execution, have deliciously cynical morals. Salt Wine puts some grand old seagoing-myths on their heads, and Quarry fills in yet another piece of the world of Innkeeper's Song and the short story collection from the same world. There's also A Dance For Emilia - a beautiful story of friendship and love printed here for every fan who missed the much overlooked gift book edition from several years ago.
There is always a strong musical theme running through Beagle's work - and of course there is one musical story here: Mr. Sigerson. Mr. Siegerson is a brilliant violinist and also a persona of the great Sherlock Holmes. In this mystery, Holmes and the conductor of a Norwegian orchestra uncover underhanded dealings and an illicit affair and any musician will recognize one of their own in the narrator and characters of the story.
The real jewels in this book are El Regalo and Two Hearts. El Regalo introduces two new characters, Marvyn and Angie. With promises to tell their whole story in a novel, Beagle introduces two kids growing up in Avicenna and growing into some magical powers. Marvyn, like any well-balanced kid, uses his abilities to take out the garbage and wash the dishes, but Angie is still concerned that his powers might get them into trouble. When Angie makes an embarrassing choice to confess her love to a boy at school, Marvyn rushes in to save the day and lands both of them in last Thursday, possibly permanently. Two Hearts is quite simply a gift to any fan of The Last Unicorn. In Beagle's earlier days he created each book in its own world, and the short stories that he wrote never went back to those places. After more than thirty years, the story is told of Shmendrick and Molly Grue's further adventures, along with Lir and the land he rules. Two Hearts seems almost to be something dug up from the days immediately following the writing of The Last Unicorn. The characters remain as true to themselves as any reader could hope and again, Beagle promises a full-length story of Sooz, the narrator.
Once again, Beagle has topped his previous efforts and not only re-asserted his status as a master of the Fantasy genre, but shown that he still has plenty more stories to tell us.
Book Review: Peter S. Beagle: Living National Treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
I hereby nominate Peter S. Beagle as a Living National Treasure. How many of us have laughed and wept and felt goose flesh while reading his stories? And for decades!! The Line Between contains the novella for which Peter won (finally, finally) a Hugo Award. What a treat to see Schmendrick, Molly and King Lir again. Rather than seem like an epilogue to The Last Unicorn, this reads more like a prologue to a new epic story of love and adventure. I can't wait to find out what happens to Sooz when she turns seventeen and gets to use her gift of magic. If I were a king I'd build a special wing at the castle for Sir Peter and give him all the food, wine and song (okay, and women too) his heart desires so he could happily and contentedly write me tales until I'm an old man.
(UPDATE: Since first writing this review Peter won the Nebula award for Two Hearts, the coda to the Last Unicorn included in this collection.)
More The Line Between reviews:
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