"The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle

This book felt like what you'd get if Neil Gaiman and C. S. Lewis co-wrote a novel.  It's sometimes eerie and dark, sometimes just weird and funny, sometimes heartwarming, and always off-kilter, but with deeper meaning below the surface.

It has a fairly simple storyline: the last unicorn learns she is the last unicorn and sets out to find out what happened to the rest of her kind.  She meets bad guys and good guys and mediocre guys.  She has adventures.  She gets in and out of dangerous situations.  She almost decides to give up her quest, but doesn't.  She grows wiser and helps others grow kinder or wiser or more noble.  

The writing was beautifully image-rich and often surprising, sometimes making me think of Jasper Fforde and sometimes of L. M. Montgomery.  But mostly of Gaiman and Lewis.

I spent most of this book going, "What, now?" because it's generally pretty trippy stuff.  I did enjoy it, overall, and I could see using it for high school history for my kids if they begged me for more fantasy for lit class, since it's definitely a modern fantasy classic.

Particularly Good Bits:

"One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone" (p. 250).

"Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story" (p. 251).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some lightly bawdy humor, plus some dark and perilous and creepy things.

This is my 26th book read for my 4th Classics Club list.