Persephone has left her husband Hades, is hiding out in Seattle, and is working as a waitress. He portrays a magical spring and summer, caused by a divine contretemps between Persephone and Hades. His strange new urban fantasy, a retelling of the Persephone myth, set in Seattle and on an island on Puget Sound, is about climate change: it explores fertility, flowerings, harvest, and death. I also very much enjoyed his novella, Lila the Werewolf, and I See By My Outfit, a travel memoir of his cross-country motorcycle trip in the ’60s. Beagle, the winner of the Locus, the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Myythopoeic awards, is best-known for his ’60s fantasy classic, The Last Unicorn. Seasonally appropriate and socially pertinent is Peter S. Beagle’s Summerlong and Virginia Woolf’s The Years. Beagle’s Summerlong, Virginia Woolf’s The Years, Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper (to be reviewed later, or tbrl), Anita Brookner’s Visitors (tbrl), Elizabeth McKenzie’s The Portable Veblen (tbrl), and Winston Graham’s Jeremy Poldark. Still greener than usual on the trails, but I admit it’s lovely. We’ve known about climate change since–when?–the ’50s? I try not to think much about the future. These days I try to grab the beauty of the moment. Still greener than usual, but it’s lovely.
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