The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
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Book Reviews of The Last Unicorn
Book Review: Post-Modern Fantasy of the Highest Order
Summary: 5 Stars
Hidden away in a lilac wood, the last unicorn cares little for the outside world. After all, she is magic and she is immortal. However, when she hears that she might be the only unicorn left in the world, she sets out on a journey to see if there are any of her kind left. After being captured by a freak show she meets and joins forces with a bumbling magician, Schmendrick, and later, a middle aged maiden, Molly Grue. Together these three embark on a quest that will take them into the dangerous realm of King Haggard. It will be here that the last unicorn will have to face her nemesis, the Red Bull, in order to free the rest of her kind. To a large extent, Peter Beagle's book is considered an interesting work of fantasy because it was one of the first post-modern science fiction novels. The most salient feature of post-modern science fiction is a rebellion against the classical fantasy/science fiction novel that creates a world that is completely separate from our own. In this traditional world the characters say and do things that are completely in line with the small universe that the author has created in his novel. The author strives to draw the reader completely into the story. Beagle rebels against this by creating a novel that constantly pulls the reader out of the novel, back in to the real world, only to slide back into the plot. The Last Unicorn is a novel that is written in this post-modern style, of which many examples can be found.
Beagle does not immediately strike you with his departure from traditional fantasy. The unicorn lives in a lilac wood all by herself, in what is seemingly a medieval world. There are kings and wizards and peasants. But just when the reader is being drawn into this "other" world, Beagle introduces a character to disrupt it in the form of a talking butterfly. The thing that pulls the reader out of Beagle's world, back into his own, is not the butterfly's ability to talk (that, after all, is not too bizarre in a fantasy novel), but what he has to say. Among the many things that do not belong in a traditional fantasy novel, but work well in a post-modern one, are the butterflies' references to Shakespeare "you're a fishmonger," children's singalongs "you are my sunshine," and songs from America's pop culture "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey, won't you come home."
Now, a veteran of fantasy could probably come up with a list of science fiction cliches that could explain this odd knowledge. Perhaps the butterfly learned these phrases by falling into a wormhole and spending time in our world. Maybe the butterfly is in fact a traveler from our world, secretly disguised. Or, perhaps this is really some bizarre post-apocalyptic world where after many millions of years and genetic mutation, the new inhabitants of our planet are uncovering our twentieth-century pop culture. But this, like other details in Beagle's novel that clearly do not fit in with the rest of the story, and are not easily explained away.
Evidence of Beagle's unorthodox style can be seen later when Schmendrick and Molly are taken captive by Captain Cully. Schmendrick tries to flatter the outlaw by pretending that he has heard of many of the outlaw's exploits. As Cully begins to fall for this, he becomes much more friendly with Schmendrick, offering the wizard a place by his fire, an invitation to talk of what people supposedly say about Cully in other countries, and with a unique twist, a taco. An odd foodstuff for outlaws seemingly modeled after Robin Hood. Later, Schmendrick spends a good part of the night making up stories about the glories of Captain Cully. The reader learns later on that most of these tales came from his "good grounding in Anglo-Saxon folklore."
Beagle uses many other small descriptions to rip the reader out of his fantasy world. At one point a prince is described "reading a magazine." At another point, Prince Lir is described as having armor that is partially made of bottlecaps.
A more subtle example of post-modern fantasy is the birth of Prince Lir. The Prince was found on butcher's block, warm despite the fact that it was snowing, surrounded by stray cats. As Drinn, the villager that found him said "it purred prophecy." But it is at this point that Beagle breaks the spell. If this were a traditional fantasy, Drill would have become the foster parent for the boy and raised him. But this is not traditional fantasy. Drill instead scares away the cats and leaves the baby to what he expects will be death; because, he fears that the child that seems to have an aura of destiny around him might grow to be the one that brings down the prophecy of doom that had been cursed upon his town by a witch.
These are just a few of the many examples that make The Last Unicorn a very different, but very beautiful, kind of fantasy. The post-modern style of fantasy, or the fantastic, has had a hard time being accepted by many hard core fantasy fans. Many critics do not like novels that try to constantly toss the reader back and forth between the world of fantasy in the book, and the real world. These people find it very hard to take the story seriously. Others, however, are able to enjoy the beauty of a book such as this. They see The Last Unicorn and books like it as a fantasy novel that does not take itself too seriously, and can use references from real life as a form of humor and another form of expression in the novel. Imagination, after all, isn't a bad thing to have, especially in a fantasy world.
The Last Unicorn is a beautiful book, one that is filled with holes and spaces that draw you into its beauty and let you become a part of its creation.
Book Review: The Post-Modern Fairy Tale
Summary: 5 Stars
Along with the rest of the civilized world, my wandering memories often lead me back to two of my favorite childhood movies, "The Neverending Story" and "The Last Unicorn." Practically all I could remember of the latter was some skull yelling "Unicorn! Uuuunicorn!" That image and that voice have left a lingering discomfort in the back of my mind for years. A while back, I found a little time to investigate Michael Ende's novel, "The Neverending Story," and just recently, I managed to come across a copy of "The Last Unicorn," and I couldn't help but read it. In both cases, these novels have more than repayed my childhood memories, giving my adult mind philosophical and literary substance as well as real joy. Peter S. Beagle's 1968 novel, "The Last Unicorn," is much more than a simple fantasy story - though it is rife with magicians, mythical creatures, and all of the customary trappings. It is even more than a complex fantasy story - somehow Beagle enchants us into a timeless place where nothing seems unusual - "The Last Unicorn" creates a space for magic in our modern lives. The novel begins as a unicorn overhears two hunters riding through her wood - the hunters debate whether unicorns exist anymore. The unicorn begins to wonder if indeed she is the last of her kind, and goes in search of other unicorns. She is caught sleeping by Mommy Fortuna, owner of the Midnight Carnival, who displays the unicorn for a time alongside a real harpy and a motley bunch of meek, hopeless animals who are made, through Fortuna's magic, to resemble other dangerous mythical beasts for the entertainment of travellers, tourists, and townsfolk. Schmendrick, a fairly useless magician, and an assistant to the Midnight Carnival, recognizes the unicorn for what she is, and freeing her, they set off together to find the unicorns. Once they are joined by a woodland dweller named Molly Grue, the company is complete. Their search brings them to the domain of King Haggard, who, along with the demoniacal, but eerily incorporeal Red Bull, seems to have something to do with the disappearance of the unicorns.
Though the novel is a quest, there isn't much real movement - the novel moves from the unicorn's wood, over land to Haggard's castle by the sea, which is where almost half of the novel takes place. The more significant quests here are ones of self-discovery, as the unicorn, Schmendrick, and Prince Lir, King Haggard's heir, must all try to figure out who they are, what they want to be, and how to accomplish their goals without being consumed by existential despair. Related questions the novel poses include speculations on the nature of the hero, on the metafictional nature of the fairy tale as a genre, and what the difference is between evil and self-interest, between love and hatred. "The Last Unicorn" is also a rumination on the nature of interpersonal (or interspecies) relationships, and is in spots as concerned with ecology and the environment as J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings."
However, far and away, the most compelling facets of "The Last Unicorn" for me are Beagle's minor touches, minutiae that some people might miss on a first reading. Seemingly meaningless conversations, like the one between the hunters which begins the novel, between Captain Cully and his disaffected latter-day Robin Hoods in the forest, or between a 'married' pair of blue jays betray a depth and attention to detail and a real artistry in Beagle's literary workmanship. They alert us, as certainly as Tolkien's work does, to the fact that we, the novel's readers, live in a prosaic world, divested of magic and enchantments. Beagle's novel shows that creating, living in, and sustaining a fantasy world can be as much work, and can involve as much pain as our own normal daily lives. Indeed, one amazing quality of "The Last Unicorn" is that it hardly differentiates between the normal modern world and that of the fairy tale. One reviewer mentions that the novel takes place in the Middle Ages - is it at all astonishing then, to hear Cully at one point mention the "field-recordings" that will one day be made of his oral poetry while he himself eats a taco?
"The Last Unicorn" has endured for almost 40 years because it manages to imbue things like "field-recordings" with a kind of magical quality that seems as natural as talking birds and butterflies. Beagle also reminds us that we are each heroes of our own stories - whether we stick to the literary conventions of genre or not. The inclusion of subtle anachronisms and metafictional commentaries like these clues us to Beagle's art - the creation of a new kind of fairy tale, one which attempts to make our own world, our own lives, sources of almost limitless wonder and joy, as well as of continuing epic challenges.
Book Review: A Beautiful Allegory
Summary: 5 Stars
I have seen (and read) three types of fairytale fantasy published in the last century. The first is like Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles: it is clever at the expense of fairy tales, mocking (usually gently) the tropes of the genre, often through metafictional techniques. This type does little for me. The second is like most of Patricia McKillip's work: it takes those same tropes completely seriously and (if done well, as in McKillip's case) reminds us why the tropes exist in the first place, because they have width and depth and resonance. This is one of my favorite branches of fantasy. The third is the rarest, because it's the most difficult: it goes beyond the form of the fairytale and into archetypal territory, quite literally writing myth.
The Last Unicorn is all three of these.
That is probably fitting, given that it is one of the classics in the genre. Being three things at once, it left me with a sense of. . . unevenness, though to be fair that sense came only in retrospect; Beagle's prose is gorgeous and sure, and I devoured the book in two large gulps then wished there was more. Reading a random sampling of reviews online just highlighted the unevenness, though, because so many people seemed to be reading entirely different books.
The first thread, the metafictional, humorous side of the novel, predictably worked least well for me, though it worked better than any of the other books of that type that I have read. All of the characters know they are in a fairytale, and they either accede to the needs of the tale or try to shape it to their own ends depending on their personalities. There is also a sprinkling of anachronisms, which I read as another metafictional device, but may just be a leftover from Beagle's original vision of the story, which was set in modern times. What made this thread work better for me than those books who rely solely on the metafictional device is that Beagle used those moments when the characters broke the fourth wall to feed into his thematic concerns, something I will get to in a bit.
The second thread, the straight-forward fairy tale, is exquisitely, heartbreakingly beautiful. Had Beagle written just this story I probably would have out-and-out loved it more, though it likely would not have lingered in my consciousness as long as I suspect this reading will. It has all sorts of fairytale tropes: the quest, the unlikely band of fellows, the evil crone and the evil king, the curse, a tragic romance. . . there's even a talking cat. This section is about finding one's true nature; it is also very much about love, and the way it makes heroes of anyone it touches. It also features the loveliest passages, like this one:
"Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she stepped out onto it, away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could."
The third thread, the allegory, is why this book has so much weight, the reason so many people can read totally different books in it and love them all. There are actually two related allegories here: one, running through the first half of the book, is about perception, and the way we see only what we expect to see; the other, coming to the fore in the second half of the book, is about the unicorn as a sort of Platonic Form of beauty. The presence of these allegories makes the book fail in a lot of ways as a straight fantasy novel -- as some reviewers have noticed, there are no people in the world but those absolutely necessary to the story/message, and the world-building is nothing like internally consistent. But ultimately the allegory is the reason The Last Unicorn is deservedly a classic, in any genre.
Book Review: Enjoyable tale if you read it on its own terms
Summary: 5 Stars
Lyrically written, charming, and engaging, The Last Unicorn can be best appreciated if it is read on its own terms. It is not a sweeping epic like any of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, nor a religious allegory like many of C.S. Lewis' works, nor a Disneyesque fairy tale with the perfunctory happy ending. Anyone reading it and expecting some variant of these other works will be disappointed. What The Last Unicorn does is take the traditional literary forms of the quest and the fairy tale, then stand them on their head in a very post-modern sort of way. It does this to entice readers to ponder the philosophical questions that author Peter S. Beagle considers important.
One certainly does not have to read The Last Unicorn in some deeply philosophical manner to enjoy it. As a simple tale, it is entertaining enough, with wonderful prose, imagery, and characters that will stay with you for a long time. There is the creaky witch, Mommy Fortuna, her Midnight Carnival, and the Harpy that will be her doom. There is Schmendrick, the hapless magician, struggling to tap his inner wizard. There is the genteel balladeer and highwayman, Captain Cully; his giant of a right-hand man, Jack Jingly; and his earthy charwoman, Molly Grue. And, of course, there is the Unicorn herself, a majestic and magical creature, a primeval force of nature rooted in eternity itself.
The tale itself begins with the Unicorn in her forest, discovering that she is apparently the very last Unicorn in the world. Although a solitary creature, this disturbs her greatly, so she begins a quest to find her people, leaving her beloved forest behind to travel a dangerous world. Along the way, she meets new friends (Schmendrick, Molly Grue) who help her overcome the many ordeals and enemies that she encounters along the way. Ultimately, the quests leads the Unicorn and her companions to the realm of King Haggard, the jaded and miserly ruler of a destitute kingdom by the sea, who may have had something to do with the disappearance of the Unicorns. At this point, the tale makes some twists and turns, before reaching its final, bittersweet conclusion.
Beneath the tale is a philosophical subtext that delights in exploring the answers to a variety of questions. What is the nature of illusion? Can we desire an illusion to be real so much that it does, in fact, become real - until its spell is broken? What is the difference between time and eternity? What would an eternal creature be like, and how would we react to it? If an eternal creature could somehow be made to see things from a mortal's point of view, how would it react? Beagle doesn't necessarily provide answers to all of these questions - at times, he just raises them for the reader to ponder.
Unfortunately, Beagle can't resist dropping all-too-obvious hints that he is playing a friendly little game with his readers. Anachronistic references to tacos and field recordings, a butterfly that spouts pop tunes from the 1930's, a talking skull that makes reference to "character assassins" - Beagle drops a number of not-so-subtle and unnecessary hints, calling the reader's attention to how he is violating the traditional norms of the literary form that he is using, and daring the reader to figure out why. It's as if Beagle were sitting across the room from the reader, winking and smiling wryly.
In the end, however, Beagle manages to pull off a difficult literary feat - creating a simple and enjoyable story that can be read at a deeper, more philosophical level. The reader can approach it in either way and take something away from his work. While it doesn't have quite the same emotional resonance for me as (say) any of Tolkien's works, the Last Unicorn deserves its status as a modern literary classic.
Book Review: Point Taken
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter Beagle's THE LAST UNICORN is always a discovery for me, however often I encounter it. Only with reluctance would I name the book one of my favourites, for it employs throughout devices I routinely find annoying in modern fantasy writing. Chief among these is an awareness on the part of the characters that they ARE in a kind of faerie tale and, as such, have generally defined roles they are expected to play. I prefer to lose myself in a story rather than be reminded continually that it IS a story. The 1982 animated film adaptation, though following the plot and dialogue of the book with unusual faithfulness, had problems of its own. Too often it tended toward the melodramatic, and some of the line-delivery could only be described as 'shrill'.
Yet it was the animated version I discovered first and, whatever the imperfections, I have re-watched it many times over the years. Clearly, something in it touched me as few films ever do. And I must concede that Beagle's novel is even more affecting.
Set in a world of vaguely mediaeval elements laced with what has been called 'intentional anachronism' and populated with towns and kingdoms that never were, this is the story of a solitary unicorn who learns that all others of her kind have disappeared from the world. She therefore leaves the security of her enchanted forest in order to discover what became of them. Not unexpectedly, on this quest she encounters various individuals whose destinies will be realized by how they help or hinder her. Yet there is more melancholy than magic in this, for few are pleased with what they gain. A bitter old man is what he is precisely because he has spent his life in a relentless and uncompromising search FOR lasting happiness. A younger man becomes a hero to win the woman he loves, but instead he gains a kingdom for which he had no desire. And then there is Molly, who chased a dream in her youth, only to wind up in used and disillusioned drudgery. The most heart-breaking moment of the entire work may be when she first sees the unicorn and cries out, 'Where have you been? ... What good is it to me that you're here now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? ... How dare you come to me now, when I am this?'
There is humour in the tale as well, albeit most often wry, sardonic, or simply playful. And there is a happy ending overall, if somewhat ambivalent for the individuals themselves.
Ultimately, however, UNICORN evades the foreshadowed cynicism and achieves poignance. For me, what makes it work most is the unique 'poetry' of its prose. Beagle's metaphors and similes are particularly compelling, fashioned on unexpected images that really do work. 'One owl-less autumn evening, they ... saw the castle ... thin and twisted, bristling with thorny turrets, dark and jagged as a giant's grin.' A vast monster 'was the color of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed.' A young girl's 'skin was the color of snow by moonlight.' Later she 'fell as irrevocably as a flower breaks ....' 'Things happened both swiftly and slowly as they do in dreams, where it is really the same thing.' The genius of such descriptions is that they often evoke a sense, rather than an image. We may not actually KNOW what colour is blood under an old wound, but we FEEL its darkness and grim persistence.
THE LAST UNICORN is a story of the bittersweet, of melancholy joy, of wonder mingled with resignation, of oppressive gloom and extraordinary beauty, of wit and of wisdom and of poetry. It does not LOOK like 'great literature', but it teaches throughout that appearances are deceiving -- and goes on to prove the point.