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. ( )

Giving up on this one. Too...dreary? Plodding? Something. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

Interesting fantasy from point of view of a dead girl in a cemetery. ( )