A living Myth- that is what Beagle's In Calabria is about.

Claudio Bianchi is a solemn farmer who never wanted to be one in the first place. Even though he is not bitter, there is a sadness and mist around his little farm and around himself. It prevents him from having too much contact with anybody- except for the post man.

He seems as content as he can get when one day, she comes in his life. Not a woman, not a relative, but la Signora as he calls her. The white unicorn is searching around his farm, for what Claudio cannot say.

It is here our story begins as we see this world through Claudio's eyes. The wonders of the unicorn, what happened to her and how Claudio finds somebody he can trust, somebody who he can love. Without fear without giving up himself.

I enjoyed this story extremely and it has touched me like rarely a story can. It is heart-wrenching, sometimes utterly lovely, mysterious. My heart thumped in my ribcage so hard at some points, I was barely able to read on.

The mysteries of unicorns and Beagle's work have been there all my life. Evey christmas, I would watch The Last Unicorn on TV and I cried every single time. I still watch it on christmas. And so, As I saw this book by the author of The Last Unicorn, I couldn't resist requesting it. I'm glad I did.

The characters were deep and intriguing even though some of them didn't have a lot of 'screen time'.

The story is rather short with about 90 pages on my eReader. It is fast.paced were it needs to be and detailed where it needs to be detailed. I loved how Calabria was not a world of wonder and myth but rather a place of our century in which Google Maps exists and the people are just ordinary people instead of heroic, totally moral and unrealistic fellows.

Th only reason I gave 4 Ribbons is that, even though this book is very touching, there wasn't all that much happening and I would have liked to have a few more scenes of relationship between Claudio and Giovanna and maybe an Epilogue what happens to the unicorns.

*I received a copy via Netgally in exchange for my honest review.

John W. Campbell or one of the other Golden Age editors once observed that the best science fiction writing begins with the world as we know it and changes one thing. We can quibble over whether Peter Beagle is writing SF or fantasy but "In Calabria" begins with the everyday life of an ordinary farmer in Calabria who walks out of his farmhouse one day to find a unicorn grazing in his field. That's it. That's the story, and it is wonderful wonderful writing. Another Peter Beagle trionfo.

I received a review copy of "In Calabria" by Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon) through NetGalley.com.