SOURCE: "The Dragon Has Gout," in New York Times Book Review, March 24, 1968, pp. 4, 8.

Below, Riely remarks on Beagle's skillful personification of animals in The Last Unicorn.

It is nothing to be surprised at that a man whose first novel [A Fine and Private Place] began with a raven stealing a sausage and bringing it to a dirty old man (Elijah?) who had lived for 19 years in a cemetery, should now write a novel about the last of the unicorns. The only rope that can hold a unicorn (one of his odd people tells me) is made of fish breath, bird spittle, a woman's beard, the miaowing of a cat, the sinews of a bear and—one thing more—mountain roots. Peter S. Beagle handles that rope as skillfully as a rodeo expert. He has given us a unicorn (female) in whose existence I find it easier to believe...