mpiraja

This is my second Peter S. Beagle short story collection and I found it to be a bit more uneven than "Sleight of Hand". I also discovered that I like my short fiction to have some kind of thread throughout the stories linking them together. "Nine Stories", "Adverbs", and "Slight of Hand" all follow this maxim. I couldn't quite tell what the intention of PSB was in putting these particular stories together. In some respect, several stories deal with something unspoken: an all consuming angel, a brother that is the blackest sheep of the family, a lover who can read your every thought and feel your hidden desires, a marriage that is falling apart, a long held vendetta, an evil witch of a neighbor, a tryst with Titania herself, and horrible memories suppressed in order to survive. The two weakest stories do not adhere to this theme I'm formulating: King Pelles the Sure and The Unicorn Tapestries. King Pelles the Sure may have some nugget in there, but I will have to think on it. The Unicorn Tapestries seemed a bit indulgent on the part of PSB in that he wrote this based on an extremely vivid childhood experience and it is a poem cycle and it never really got the exposure he wanted it to get, so he stuck it in here. It felt out of place with the text, not bad, just not appropriate. Overall, I really loved most of the stories and really respect Peter S. Beagle as an author! His ability to inhabit a character and develop distinct narrative voice as well as incredibly fascinating fantastical ideas is a gift I treasure!

2020-08-10 00:46