Good fantasy writing makes the world of magic seem believable and immanent, as if you could reach out and touch a mystic amulet. But great fantasy writing makes the real world around us, the world of buses and cars and phones and asphalt, feel suffused with magic. When you're in the hands of a master like Peter S. Beagle, you can feel as if this transformative wonder was there all along, in your surroundings, and you just weren't paying enough attention. And Beagle's new novel, Summerlong, is a master class in how to reveal the fantastic in everyday life.
The actual story is one you've seen a hundred times before, but the writing has a tenderness and intimacy that makes these particular characters and their situation come to life in a way that haunts you when you're done reading. In Washington state, a retired professor named Abe and an aging flight attendant named Joanna have an unconventional relationship: She stays over at Abe's place in Puget Sound and they behave like long-term partners, just without the affection or protestations of undying love. One day, they meet a girl with the unlikely name of Lioness Lazos, waiting tables at their local diner, and they quickly realize there's something unusual about Lioness. They end up inviting her to come live in Abe's garage, and soon their lives are changed utterly.
You'll probably guess early on who Lioness is, and why it suddenly becomes the most brilliant springtime, followed by the most fertile summer ever, in Puget Sound. Beagle takes his time revealing her secrets, but also doesn't try to play games with the reader. The book isn't about unraveling mysteries—it’s about what happens when a mythic figure comes to live among us. Reading Summerlong, and its story of a comfortable life being disturbed by something otherworldly, I kept thinking of the famous quote from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: "We ought not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while."
The story of a supernatural entity that lives among ordinary people is a great opportunity to explore the edges where the mundane and the uncanny come into contact. And Beagle, a legendary author whose previous books include A Fine and Private Place and The Last Unicorn, effortlessly depicts the hints of other-worldly strangeness in Puget Sound. Early on, Abe says he's tired of monotheism and wishes for "mobs of gods," to which Lioness replies, "You wouldn't like them. They walk the streets, talking to themselves. They smell bad." The book is full of wickedly clever moments like this, some of which may remind some readers of Neil Gaiman's* American Gods*.
But the focus in Summerlong is squarely on Beagle's human characters, and how their lives change during the unnaturally warm summer that Lioness Lazos brings. Abe is stuck in a rut, endlessly working on his great project: a book about John Ball and the Peasant Revolution, until he suddenly meets a young musician named Twelve-Bar Billy and fulfills a secret life-long dream of becoming a bluesman. Joanna, increasingly bitter and burned out in her life as a flight attendant, finally pursues her fantasy of kayaking in the Sound. Meanwhile, Joanna's lesbian daughter Lily, who has a habit of falling self-destructively in love with totally unsuitable women, becomes smitten with Lioness and won't recognize all the signs that she and Lioness can never be together.
There is supernatural danger in Summerlong, and a sense that great cosmic forces are out of balance somewhere -- but the real danger and excitement in this book comes from the moments when Joanna finally takes her daughter out into the open sea in their kayak, and everything goes disastrously wrong. And the big thrills include a blues concert where Abe finally lets himself cut loose on the harmonica. And the novel's big climax mostly revolves around the fate of Lily's doomed crush on Lioness.
Beagle's eye for detail has never been sharper---his description of what it's like to be in a tiny boat on the ocean might just make you feel the sea spray in your face. And in particular, he has an incredible gift for conveying the little details that make a long-term relationship between two older people. The ambiguously romantic partnership between Abe and Joanna feels lived in, from their practiced banter to all the tiny rituals that bond them together. And Beagle lets you feel the richness of shared experience between these two misanthropes, even as you also slowly awaken to the reality that Abe and Joanna take each other for granted, and this has been a problem for a long time.
Summerlong is full of sly observations about gods, magic and the uncanny---including some ways of thinking about myths and fables that feel brand new and hard won. But the real insights in this book are all about relationships, and closeness, and growing older. And in the end, Beagle leaves you feeling that maybe Ray Bradbury was right, and one ought not to be let alone---you need to be really bothered, every once in a while.
