Fantasy Icon Peter Beagle Talks Returning to the World of The Last Unicorn

Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is a formative text for many fantasy fans, a story whose specifics have only stayed with us for the bulk of our lives, but have impacted how we, as readers, understand the genre itself. Like most of the author’s works, which run the gamut from delicate meditations on death (A Fine and Private Place) to charming ghost stories (Tamsin) and contemporary mythological retellings (Summerlong), The Last Unicorn is full of complex thematic and narrative contradictions that challenge the ways many of us have been taught to understand what a fantasy story is meant to be and do. 

Beagle’s work is unique for many reasons, not the least of which is his tendency to lace his works reject easily digestible platitudes in favor of a bittersweet kind of honesty—and an admission that sometimes there are no easy answers or true happy endings, as much as we might wish that weren’t the case. 

Now, decades after its original publication, the author has returned to the world of his most famous story with The Way Home, a pair of novellas that take us back to the realm of The Last Unicorn. And while its two tales touch on themes that will be familiar to anyone who has read the original—the inevitably of death, the sharp sting of regret, and the idea that while nothing truly lasts forever, we never really lose the things we love, either—the story opens up this fantasy universe in fascinating new ways, even as it gives us something like closure in others.

We had a chance to chat with Beagle himself about The Way Home, the inspiration for Sooz’s story, and what makes his particular brand of fantasy so compelling.

Paste Magazine: Truly, I’m so thrilled to be able to read more stories from the world of The Last Unicorn and I doubt I’m going to be alone in that. What do you think it is about this fictional setting that has spoken so deeply to readers for so long?

Peter Beagle: Really, all I can say is that it just keeps drawing me in. There are things there that I simply don’t know, and I need to find them out. Why do legends survive through the centuries? I just want to keep going.

Paste: “Two Hearts” is phenomenal and I’m excited for more people to get the chance to encounter it since its original publication. Tell me a little bit about what it was like revisiting Molly Grue, Schmendrick, and Lir as characters again in this novella. Did writing them feel different the second time around?  

Beagle: No, it was truly like encountering old friends. I hadn’t seen them in some time, but there they are. They’ve changed, they’ve grown, but it was wonderfully comforting. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I never do.

Paste: Why center both these novellas around a character like Sooz? What made you want to re-enter this world via the POV of a nine-year-old girl?  

Beagle: Well, she isn’t always nine years old. You meet her at nine, but the second time around, she’s seventeen. Whatever else she is, though, she’s brave and very stubborn. 

At any given moment, I can be brave or stubborn, but you can’t count on it. I admire that she’s always brave and stubborn. And I like spending time with her, to see what’s going to happen next and what she will do.

Paste: I read that you have a particularly deep personal emotional connection to “Sooz”—can you tell us a little bit about it if you don’t mind?  

Beagle: Sooz in her short life has encountered love and loss, and that is what I’ve had to deal with. I know something about that. Love, and loss, and going on afterwards.

Paste: What ultimately made you decide to revisit Sooz’s story again in The Way Home, after so many years? 

Beagle: Sooz is growing up. Her life has changed, and she’ll always remember what she went through, but she’s going on. The Unicorn is eternal, but Sooz isn’t; she’s ongoing, which is different. 

Even at my advanced age, I’m still fascinated to see what happens to her. It’s easier to think about things, and to write, now that I don’t have someone looking over my shoulder and complaining all the time. Of course, my editor will always pick out the weak spots for me to fix, but I feel more free to write them in the first place.   

Paste: How would you describe Sooz’s emotional journey over the course of these two novellas?

Beagle: It goes from pure stubborn determination because she’s a kid and she doesn’t know any better, to the realization that one way or another, everything costs. As Kipling says, “for all we take, we must pay – but the price is cruel hard.” 

Sooz can see the pain of the Queen in the other world; she doesn’t really understand it, but she knows that the Queen will suffer from losing someone she loved.

Paste: The language and descriptions in “Sooz” are beautifully lyrical, particularly when it comes to the Dreamies and their realm. Was your idea of these magical folk inspired by any particular folk or fairytale tradition? 

Beagle: They simply came to me as the thing that you can’t afford to take for granted. To themselves, they’re real; to outsiders like Sooz, they don’t seem quite real. They’re enchanting and dangerous. You can’t ever forget that they’re dangerous.

Paste: The thing that has always moved me so much about your writing is, strangely enough, its lack of what I’d call maudlin sentimentality—here, bad things happen in these stories, often to good people, and even supposedly happy endings are ultimately bittersweet, undercut by loss and regret, and going home again doesn’t mean the place you arrive is necessarily the same place you left. Talk to me a little bit about why you think it’s important to have this kind of almost bleak realism in a clearly fantasy world. 

Beagle: That’s life as I understand it.  A long time ago, I was telling a story to an audience of non-English speakers. I had a translator, and we were talking about The Last Unicorn, and I said that nothing’s ever as bad as you thought it was going to be, and nothing’s ever as good as you thought it would be. Afterwards, Christopher Lee swooped down on me and demanded to know, “Where do you get off telling the entire story of my life in one line?” I didn’t really know what he meant then, but I think I do now. 

Nothing is ever quite for free, and there’s always pain involved, even in the most joyous moments. There are things I remember as absolutely joyous, but I know, deep down, that someone paid for them somehow, even if I don’t know how.

Both The Way Home and the author’s preferred text edition of The Last Unicorn are both available now

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.