We never talk about my brother...

I'm currently reading We never talk about my brother by Peter S. Beagle (author of The Last Unicorn). It's a fantasy collection of nine stories, all written by this wondrous author who never ceases to amaze me.

I wasn't planning on writing anything about this book but after the last two stories I read, I thought I really needed to say something about it.

And I'm going to start with the one I just finished, which is called The Unicorn Tapestries. It's a poem cycle based on, you probably guessed, the Unicorn Tapestries, seven hangings made around the end of the 15th century, that tell the tale of, as Beagle himself puts it, "a brutal unicorn hunt". It's hard to find the exact words to describe what these poems made me feel... They moved me almost to tears (nothing to do with the fact that I'm pretty sensitive today :p ). Beagle managed to bring the tapestries to life with the magic of his words and recreate the unicorn hunt from the point of view of a small boy, who tells this story with eyes that still see everything with the innocence of one that recognizes something sacred when he sees it and wonders "What must we look like to a unicorn?"

I have to say that if The Unicorn Tapestries would have been the only good thing about this book, I would have bought it anyway just to have the privilege to read those poems.

Fortunately, they weren't the only good things about the book. All the stories I've read so far have been good (like The Stickball Witch), some more than others. But there is one in particular that also stands out, called By Moonlight. That's the other story that made this book worth every penny. This one is about a fugitive that stumbles into a campfire in the middle of the night and there he meets a strange old man. They start talking and, when the fugitive realizes that this man claims to have visited the Faery, that other world Under the hill, he asks to listen to his story. And so the old man starts to weave the tale of his past and a life he lost so many years ago in that other land where he loved and was loved. Beautiful, I say. Haunting and beautiful.

I still have one more story to read before I finish the book but even if it happens to suck, I will still love the book and treasure it because of those two brilliant jewels that I found inside.

You are a Master of your craft, Peter S. Beagle. Yes, you are.