The Keeper of Lonely Spirits

The Keeper of Lonely Spirits by E.M. Anderson, 400 pages

When Peter Shaughnessy was a teen, he was cursed by one of "them folk" to wander the world forever, unable to come home. Well, that was 200 years ago, and Peter is now an eternally 70-year-old itinerant man, wandering from town to town around the world, helping spirits (particularly the angry or fearful ones) move on and stop causing a ruckus to the living. He makes no connections and doesn't stay long, and that's been the case for more than a century. But now he's in a small town in Ohio, trying in vain to find a malevolent spirit that's infecting the whole town, and dangit, he's starting to get to know people and care about them. Can he succeed in his attempt to put the spirit to rest and then skip town before getting too attached? Hmm...

I love love loved this book. It has very strong T.J. Klune energy, managing to balance big feelings, coziness, and solid sense of what's at stake. The people who come into Peter's life are all fantastic, and I've gotta say that I am 100% behind having a 70-year-old man be the center of a slow-burning romance in a cozy fantasy. I'll be recommending this book far and wide.

A Fine and Private Place

 

A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle 317 pp.

I first read this book sometime in the 1970s and for some reason it stuck with me so I decided to revisit it. It's the tale of a man, Jonathan Rebeck, a former pharmacist who has hidden himself from society by living in an old mausoleum in a Bronx cemetery. Rebeck doesn't leave, believing he cannot pass through the gates into the outside world. A crabby raven brings him food stolen from local venders. In his nineteen years there Rebeck has met ghosts of people interred in the cemetery. When the ghosts first arrive they are very "alive" but as time passes and they gradually forget their former lives, they fade away. The latest cemetery residents are a middle-aged man who was poisoned and a young woman. Improbably, the ghosts fall in love with each other. Rebeck, too, finds himself with a lady friend who visits the mausoleum of her late husband. When Mrs. Clapper learns that Rebeck lives in the cemetery she tries to convince him it's time for him to return to the "real world." This book was originally published in 1960 and has recently been reissued. I listened to the audiobook which has an introduction by Neil Gaiman.