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A Fine & Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
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A Fine & Private Place (original 1960; edition 1992)

by Peter S. Beagle (Author), Darrell Sweet (Illustrator)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,4024813,126 (3.96)84
Conversing in a mausoleum with the dead, an eccentric recluse is tugged back into the world by a pair of ghostly lovers bearing an extraordinary gift-the final chance for his own happiness. When challenged by a faithless wife and aided by a talking raven, the lives of the living and the dead may be renewed by courage and passion, but only if not belatedly. Told with an elegiac wisdom, this & delightful tale of magic and otherworldly love & is a timeless work of fantasy imbued with hope and wonder. After multiple printings since 1960, this newest edition will contain the author's recent revisions and will stand as the definitive version of an ageless classic.… (more)
Member:Anarchyvist
Title:A Fine & Private Place
Authors:Peter S. Beagle (Author)
Other authors:Darrell Sweet (Illustrator)
Info:New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: ROC, 1992.
Collections:Your library
Rating:
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Work Information

A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle (1960)

  1. 20
    Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (Ciruelo)
    Ciruelo: Both feature a single man with a devoted attachment to a graveyard and its restless ghost.
  2. 00
    Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (Ciruelo)
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» See also 84 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 48 (next | show all)
If I read it two years ago, I would not have affected me the same way it does now. As is, I have a habit of reading before bed during my negative thought cycle and this book drew a lot of conscious and subconscious connections. Even during the day it was tough. I spent most of it with a wet face and it took me a long time to get through but it was good and I don't regret it. Just maybe wish I'd read it much sooner.. and again much later. ( )
  sraedi | Feb 2, 2024 |
Giving up on this one. Too...dreary? Plodding? Something. ( )
  electrascaife | Jul 26, 2023 |
Beagle’s leisurely and sweet fantasy touches equally on life and death, hope and despair, and the inevitability of change.

Set in a New York City cemetery, it centers around Jonathan Rebeck, a man who lives in a mausoleum, talks to ghosts, and dines on food offerings delivered by a cynical talking raven. Neither Rebeck nor the reader is ever really sure exactly how this came about, but one day he was a pharmacist living a quiet, ordinary life, and the next he was living in a cemetery, welcoming the ghosts of the recently-departed as they make the difficult transition between worlds. It’s a limited life, but one that has suited Rebeck just fine for 19 years. Then a chatty Jewish widow, Gertrude Klapper, realizes it’s more than coincidence that she sees the solitary little man every time she comes to the cemetery to visit her late husband’s grave.

The tentative developing relationship between these two, juxtaposed with the poignant story of two young ghosts who seem to have found love only after death, drive the story to its bittersweet conclusion. Things do drag a bit toward the middle of the book, and there are long blocks of dialogue or monologue that don’t do much to advance the story. But the reader who’s in the mood for pondering the Great Questions will find some enjoyment here. ( )
  LyndaInOregon | Jun 26, 2023 |
Four people -- two alive and two dead -- discuss love and loss in a cemetery overseen by an unsentimental raven. A Fine and Private Place has lots of charming parts, but its determinedly high-minded and philosophical intentions never integrate with the plot or the characters. The end result reads like a sober tract smothering a great short story. ( )
  proustbot | Jun 19, 2023 |
Interesting fantasy from point of view of a dead girl in a cemetery. ( )
  kslade | Dec 8, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 48 (next | show all)
A first novel that is both sepulchral and oddly appealing... a wry dialogue with death that may contain no large lump of wisdom but offers a fair selection of small ones.
added by jjlong | editTime (May 23, 1960)
 

» Add other authors (5 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Peter S. Beagleprimary authorall editionscalculated
Collingwood, ChrisCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gallardo, GervasioCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sweet, DarrellCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
"The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace."

[Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress]
Dedication
Dies Erste widme ich meinen Eltern, Simon und Rebecca, und meinem Bruder Daniel und selbstverständlich auch Edwin Peterson
This first one for my parents, Simon and Rebecca, and for my brother Daniel, and, as it must be, for Edwin Peterson
First words
The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.
Quotations
Man searches constantly for identity, he thought as 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. [p. 140]
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Conversing in a mausoleum with the dead, an eccentric recluse is tugged back into the world by a pair of ghostly lovers bearing an extraordinary gift-the final chance for his own happiness. When challenged by a faithless wife and aided by a talking raven, the lives of the living and the dead may be renewed by courage and passion, but only if not belatedly. Told with an elegiac wisdom, this & delightful tale of magic and otherworldly love & is a timeless work of fantasy imbued with hope and wonder. After multiple printings since 1960, this newest edition will contain the author's recent revisions and will stand as the definitive version of an ageless classic.

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