published 1996; hardback 1996

The Unicorn Sonata is a pleasant, though not exceptional, story about a girl named Joey who stumbles from modern Los Angeles into a far wilder world: the land of Shei'rah.

Thirteen-year-old Joey is a budding musician who works in a music store after school and takes lessons from the owner, John Papas. After a strange young man enters the shop and tries to sell an exotic spiraling horn that makes wonderful music, Joey hears music that beckons her on to the Border between Shei'rah and her world. She steps through and is enchanted by Shei'rah, which is chock-full of magical creatures: satyrs, water spirits, and small rock-dwelling dragons are just a few.

The ruling race is, of course, the unicorns, who occur in unimaginable variety. They are troubled, however, by a mysterious malady -- all unicorns, when they reach a certain age, begin to go blind as an encrustation grows over their eyes. Joey, and later her grandmother Abuelita, realize that they must search for a cure.

The Unicorn Sonata unfolds gently and proceeds the same way, up to the conclusion. I kept wishing something more would happen. Though the story moved along and there were problems to be solved, the central conflict wasn't sharp and its resolution was never in much doubt. Shei'rah is extremely pretty, almost overwhelmingly so. Though I feel like the Emperor in the movie "Amadeus" who told Mozart that his opera had "too many notes," I have to say that I felt like The Unicorn Sonata had too many unicorns. A single unicorn, as in Beagle's earlier work The Last Unicorn, is poignant for its rarity. A whole herd of unicorns of every shape, size, and color was not as interesting to me.

Like Shei'rah, The Unicorn Sonata had no rough edges. I longed in vain for the wild, sometimes goofy action of Beagle's The Folk of the Air or the brooding melancholy of A Fine and Private Place. There is an excellent scene in which Joey and Abuelita ride a unicorn down a busy Los Angeles highway, but that was the most memorable.

Beagle's characterization is always worth the price of admission, however. He has a deft touch with portraying people of various ethnicities and ages, especially old people. Few writers can match his elegant, economical prose style. I hope to see it employed again soon, but on something more meaty.

Review by Sara Lipowitz
Reviewed March 30, 1997

ISBN 1-57036-288-2

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