A Fine and Private Place
Cover photograph and design by Ann Monn.
One of literature's most beautiful works about ghostly times and places... told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality. – NY Times Book Review
For nineteen years, Jonathan Rebeck has hidden from the world within the confines of the Bronx's Yorkchester Cemetery, making an abandoned mausoleum his secret home. He speaks with the newly dead as they pass from life to wherever spirits truly go, providing them with comfort, an understanding ear, and even the occasional game of chess.
But Mr. Rebeck's reclusive life is soon to be disrupted. An impossible love has blossomed between two ghosts, and Rebeck himself is drawn to a living woman. Helped along by a cynical talking raven and a mysterious cemetery guard, these four souls must learn the true difference between life and death, and make choices that really are forever.
Told with an elegiac wisdom, Peter S. Beagle's first novel is a timeless work of fantasy, imbued with hope and wonder. This updated edition contains the author's final revisions, and stands as the definitive version of an enduring modern classic.
It's a fully-rounded region, this other world of Peter Beagle's imagination. – Kirkus
Both sepulchral and oddly appealing... [Beagle's] ectoplasmic fable has a distinct mossy charm. – Time
A Fine and Private Place is just as wonderful as I remembered it to be: beautifully written, the characters warmly drawn, the pages filled with conversations that run the gamut of the human condition.... it's a great book in a lovely affordable package. – The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Beagle has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carrol and J. R. R. Tolkein, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet. – The Saturday Review
Delightful! – San Francisco Chronicle
A wonderful work of literature...a gem of a novel. – BookLoons
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Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle (born 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. He is also a talented guitarist and folk singer. He wrote his first novel, urban fantasy A Fine and Private Place (1960), when he was only 19 years old. Travel book I See By My Outfit (1965) is a nonfiction classic. Today he is best known as the author of The Last Unicorn (1968), a modern fantasy classic.
Beagle's work as a screenwriter interrupted his early career direction as a fiction author, but in the 1990s he returned to prose fiction. Beagle's own favourite is a literary fantasy novel The Innkeeper's Song (1993). Four years later Beagle returned to the land that was the novels setting for a collection of short stories The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories (1997, known as Giant Bones).
In 2005 Beagle finally published a coda to The Last Unicorn, a novelette entitled ”Two Hearts,” and began work on a full-novel sequel. In 2006, ”Two Hearts” won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette and in 2007 it won the Nebula Award in the same category. The story was also nominated as a short fiction finalist for the World Fantasy Award. In 2006, Beagle won the Inkpot Award for Outstanding Achievement in Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Peter S. Beagle lives today in Oakland, California.
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Book Reviews
A Fine and Private Place is an interesting book. I liked it very much, because it was different, well written and fascinating. I think that this is a book, which can either be loved or hated depending on the reader. If you like interesting stories, you should try this book, because you might like it.