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''A Fine and Private Place'' is a fantasy novel written by Peter S. Beagle, the first of his major fantasies. It was first published in hardcover by Viking Press on May 23, 1960,〔"Books–Authors." in ''The New York Times'', May 5, 1960, page 32.〕 followed by a trade paperback from Delta the same year. Frederick Muller Ltd. published the first United Kingdom hardcover in 1960, and a regular paperback followed from Corgi in 1963. The first U.S. mass market paperback publication was by Ballantine Books in 1969. The Ballantine edition was reprinted numerous times through 1988. More recently it has appeared in trade paperback editions from Souvenir Press (1997), Roc (1999), and Tachyon Publications (2007). The work has also appeared with other works by Beagle in the omnibus collections ''The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle'' (1978) and ''The Last Unicorn / A Fine and Private Place'' (1991).〔(ISFdB entry for ''A Fine and Private Place'' )〕 It has also been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian. ==Plot== The book takes its title from a verse from Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress": "The grave's a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace." The setting, accordingly, is the fictional Yorkchester Cemetery, where one Jonathan Rebeck, a homeless and bankrupt pharmacist who has dropped out of society, has been living, illegally and unobtrusively, for nearly two decades. He is maintained by a raven who, like the legendary ravens who fed Elijah in the wilderness, supplies him with food in the form of sandwiches thieved from nearby businesses. The protagonist exhibits the peculiar ability to converse with both the raven and the shades of the dead who haunt the cemetery. Beagle portrays ghosts as being bound to the vicinity of their burial, with their minds and memories slowly fading away as their mortal forms return to the dust. As the plot proceeds, Rebeck befriends two recently arrived spirits, those of teacher Michael Morgan, who died either from poisoning by his wife or suicide (he can't remember which), and of bookshop clerk Laura Durand, who was killed by a truck. The two ghosts fall in love, and each pledge themselves to each other "for as long as I can remember love." Rebeck soon finds himself subject to another's attentions as well, in the form of a widow, Mrs. Klapper, who discovers him while visiting her husband's mausoleum. The quiet existence of this unlikely quintet is diverted by philosophical conversation and the poisoning trial of Morgan's wife, word of which is regularly provided by the raven from the local newspapers. After she is ultimately found innocent and her husband's death ruled suicide, Morgan faces separation from Laura when his body is removed to unhallowed ground. Rebeck, under the encouragement of Mrs. Klapper, is driven to find a way to reunite them, and finally takes leave of his unusual abode. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「A Fine and Private Place」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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