I have a long history with The Last Unicorn, even though I’ve only just finished reading it for the first time. As a child, I won tickets to the animated movie based on this novel and fell in love with the story of a unicorn who leaves the safety of her magical forest and sets off on a quest to find others of her kind when she learns that she might be the last one. To this day, the movie is one of my favourite fantasy films, and I have watched it so many times that I easily recognized that most of the lines from the film were taken verbatim from the 1968 book. With the novel, I also travelled a bit of a strange road, because I picked up the audiobook at least ten years ago. I started to listen and admired Beagle’s prose, which was a wonderful blend of traditional fable, freshened up for contemporary readers, with dialogue and lines that have an almost colloquial tone. I was used to this mix from the movie, but I rediscovered how much I enjoyed it when reading the book. I immediately started looking for more of Beagle’s work. Then, surprising even myself in retrospect, I decided that I wasn’t in the mood to keep reading a book whose story I already knew, and spontaneously switched to something else. Years later, now that I’ve plunged more deeply into reading again, especially fantasy, I urged myself to revisit this book and finally complete the unicorn’s journey with her.

This story is aimed at a bit of a younger readership; however, it’s also kind of sophisticated in how it brings together many fantasy tropes and looks at them from new angles. The most dominant theme involves a magical beast being turned into a human as a way to discuss how immortal purity, perfection, and magic are the opposites of mortal greed, selfishness, pride, loss, and regret — and yet how those same flaws give us meaning and make us yearn to be noble, loving, and to live better lives. The incompetent magician learns that mastering his craft will not make him great, or truly powerful. The hero needs to find balance between his valiant purpose and what gives meaning to his life. The fun thing about how Beagle has written this story is also that it’s a bit meta, and the characters actually speak about these topics as they’re experiencing their existential dilemmas.

That being said, I don’t want to suggest that this story is slow, overly contemplative, or ponderous. In fact, one of the early scenes, when the unicorn is trying to get free after being captured by a travelling menagerie, is just as exciting on the page (or audiobook) as it was on the big screen (where it had stamped itself on my 10-year-old brain). It’s also thrilling to read a bit more detail about the true monster of the story, the Red Bull, who is one of the only characters in this story who isn’t some kind of archetypal trope. The fiery beast that drove away all the unicorns is intriguing in how its power is mostly symbolic, not really harming anyone but dominating them through fear and intimidation alone (another excellent metaphor).

Though re-reading this book was very enjoyable because I was so familiar with it, nostalgia was often my driver for turning the page. Ironically, at the same time, I felt a sense of over-familiarity from knowing everything that was going to happen in the story. I sadly missed a sense of surprise. I learned that even though it can still be a good time, reading a story you know well also dampens the joy of the experience a bit. One last way that nostalgia came into play was the effect of the narrator of the audiobook. I was originally going to listen to the version I had before, narrated by the author himself — not bad, as he performed with many accents and even did a pretty good job singing a few songs. However, I found a more recent recording with a new, female narrator, so I borrowed that version instead. Unfortunately, as I was listening to her give voice to the unicorn’s thoughts and words, they did not live up to the ethereal voice of actress Mia Farrow — the unicorn’s voice in the movie. After a few attempts with the new version, I went back to the Beagle version, and I’m glad I did.

I realize that I’ve talked more about my reading experience and movie nostalgia than about the actual book itself. All I’ll say about it is that it’s a wonderful fantasy story with some magic, plenty of great themes, some adventure, some romance, some philosophizing. It’s chock full of tropes and classic imagery, but also steps enough outside of them to feel fresh and interesting (even almost 60 years later). Beagle is also able to bring us a violent conflict and showdown between light and dark, without any real bloodshed. I think this is a great fantasy book for readers who don’t think they’ll enjoy classic fantasy. Hopefully this book will change their minds. And if they do enjoy it, they’ve also got a wonderful movie waiting for them to watch.

4.5 stars

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