Preview of A Fine and Private Place Summary:

Beagle is more interested in exploring the difference between life and death in terms of how an individual person creates and maintains an identity than in any wider social issues.

This first novel is set in a Bronx cemetery, where the newly arrived dead quickly lose all sense of themselves as individual people by forgetting the sensations and impressions which composed their lives. The dead cannot leave the place in which they are buried, or make any physical impact on the world of the living. By this definition it is possible to be both physically alive and dead at the same time, as in the case of Jonathan Rebeck, who lives in a mausoleum for nineteen years, avoiding contact with the outside world. Conversely, two dead characters, Michael and Laura, are able to remain somewhat alive by constantly reminding themselves of their past experiences...