I finally read The Last Unicorn
I've heard good things about the book for forever, and I finally got around to reading The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle! I will absolutely revisit it one day. I don't know if I'll come to any big conclusions here, but I wanted to chat about my experience of the book and my opinions on it.
My overall rating of this book is a 5.75 out of 7, or 82%. That's very good, bordering on amazing!
The Style
I am a style over substance kind of person. If I don't find the style interesting, I will struggle to finish a book, and I might not finish it at all. Luckily, Beagle's style was exactly my type. It's all sort of poetic and very rich, which is perfect for a story about unicorns. The images are what stick with you most after reading it.
Although the existing animated version was nice and very book-accurate in terms of plot and dialog, I kept thinking that I would have made it much more abstract if I had adapted it myself. That's not great for marketing, though, so I get why they did what they did.
The fantastical writing style bleeds into the dialog, which makes it sound unrealistic and awkward most of the time, but I found that really endearing. It felt like a stylistic choice rather than incompetence.
It's easy to tell that this was a book written before it became the norm to save face with irony whenever you tackle any weird or whimsical subject. Maybe that's still what books are like, but I usually watch movies, which tend to be sorely lacking in the whimsy department. I found it so refreshing to read a fairy tale that did not apologize to the reader for being a fairy tale.
The Characters
All of the characters ended up feeling a lot more fleshed out than they were in the movie, which makes sense, since I got to spend much more time with them in the book. I enjoyed Prince Lir quite a bit, and the voice they chose for him in the movie makes a lot more sense now. I always thought he sounded a little too goofy. That voice seems fitting for his character now, but only because the book gives him some personality and a mini character arc of his own.
Molly Grue was always my favorite character in the movie, and that did not change one bit in the book. She's down-to-earth and practical, and I find her to be very feminine in a realistic way, rather than being a caricature of femininity. She understands the unicorn in a way that the men in the book clearly don't. There's a sort of wordless camaraderie between them.
The unicorn was the one that surprised me the most, however. You don't get as much of an idea of her power in the movie, but in the book she's essentially a cosmic horror that's nice to look at. When I said that to one of my friends, they clarified, "She's probably the closest thing anyone's seen to an angel," and I think that's an accurate way of thinking about her.
There's a big emphasis on how unlike humans she is. The being that she feels the most kinship with is the harpy, who is practically death incarnate. Anyone who recognizes the unicorn for what she is seems to have some kind of profound inner revelation just by seeing her. I loved the portrayal of the unicorn as something so magical that she's impossible to truly know.
The Gays
With such stereotypically feminine subject matter, it would be difficult for this book not to be at least a little gay. It's more than a little gay, though. It has several hallmarks of queer storytelling: found family, queer-coded relationships, magical transformations, monsters, and maybe more that aren't coming to mind immediately. Maybe I'll write more on this later, but for now, I've collected some of my favorite queer-coded quotes. Spoilers ahead.
"I love whom I love."
I mean, come on.
"I did not know what she was until now," [Prince Lir] said. "But I knew the first time I saw her that she was something more than I could see. ...no name you give her would surprise me, or frighten me. I love whom I love."
"That's a very nice sentiment," Schmendrick said. "But when I change her back into her true self, so that she may do battle with the Red Bull and free her people--"
"I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters."
Molly and the Unicorn
Basically every interaction between Molly Grue and the unicorn felt sapphic. This was not present in the movie as far as I remember, but that's probably because there wasn't that descriptiveness and abstraction I was talking about earlier (I watched plenty of Barbie movies as a kid. Kids' movies can totally be gay). The following interaction comes basically right after the two of them meet:
[Molly] reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn's cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. ...
... The magician felt himself growing giddy with jealousy, not only of the touch but of something like a secret that was moving between Molly and the unicorn. "Unicorns are for beginnings," he said, "for innocence and purity, for newness. Unicorns are for young girls."
Molly was stroking the unicorn's throat as timidly as though she were blind. She dried her grimy tears on the white mane. "You don't know much about unicorns," she said.
In the end, after all the other unicorns are freed, the unicorn who was Lady Amalthea visits the three main humans in their sleep. Prince (now King) Lir desperately asks the other two what she said to them, because, as we find out, she didn't say anything to him.
King Lir said hoarsely, "By our friendship, I beg you--tell me what she said to you." ...
"I'll never tell," [Molly] said, a little frightened, but flushing oddly. "I remember, but I'll never tell anyone, if I die for it--not even you, my lord."
