[In the review below, Fuller describes A Fine and Private Place as imaginative and witty.]

Peter S. Beagle makes a striking debut on several counts. With the first two paragraphs of A Fine and Private Place a style is established, a personality registered. We meet at once a talking raven, who is taking food (baloney) not to the prophet Elijah but to a retiring man named Jonathan Rebeck. This unique recluse had withdrawn in discouragement from a clamorous world some twenty years ago. He has lived ever since in an unattended mausoleum in a corner of Yorkchester, a vast interfaith cemetery in the upper Bronx. The raven has fed him all this while, as it explains, because "Ravens don't feel right without somebody to bring things to."

With the funeral of young Michael Morgan we discover that the dead haunt the cemetery for a time and that Mr. Rebeck has been sensitized by his strange life to the point where he can see and talk with them. Michael had been a disgruntled young history teacher and claims his wife poisoned him: later (through news fetched by the raven) we are able to follow her trial. Added to the cast are Laura, a faintly bitter ghost from a barren life, and Mrs. Klapper, a salty-tongued Bronx widow who, visiting her husband's mausoleum, discovers Mr. Rebeck and becomes a disturbing link to a world long rejected.

The ground rules in Mr. Beagle's conception of the afterlife are that the ghost is a permanent prisoner within the cemetery where the body is buried. This becomes a crucial point in the tender, wraith-like love story that develops between Michael and Laura. A disembodied love, in our literary climate, is about as original as a young man can be. The peculiar restriction becomes a key point in the climax which must not be spoiled by disclosure.

If the merit of the novel is seen early, so is one of its defects. There is a flaw in Mr. Beagle's taste. An occasional strident, inappropriate, irrelevant vulgarism makes one wince when it occurs in the fabric of so deft an artist. This simply has to be forgiven in the hope that it will be outgrown. Also, for all his crisp wit, Mr. Beagle is sentimental—his tenderness deteriorates to that level because his philosophical concept of death is shallow, making it the mere "junkyard" of the world. Yet the ghost of Morgan is forced to a painful self-knowledge somewhat inconsistent with the author's general image of death.

It is not fair to push too hard at the implications of so light a story, though they cannot be ignored. The great thing is that A Fine and Private Place has wit, charm and individuality—with a sense of style and structure notable in a first novel. Here is a sample of the author's touch:

"Alarm clocks were going off in the city now. One after another, sometimes two or three together, they drove their small silver knives into the body of the great dream that sprawled naked on the housetops. Sensual, amiable, and defenseless as it was, it would still take a while to die."

The publishers invoke E.B. White and Robert Nathan in comparison. I think Peter DeVries might be closer. Be that as it may: watch Beagle.