Beagle's language is distinguished, often making wonders come to life. It is often a pleasure to read just for the sound of his words, as if a story were a musical composition. In "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros," Beagle has set himself the task of telling a funny story with sadness in it.

Usually irrepressible, when Gottesman thinks of his life near the end of the story, he sees himself as ordinary, having accomplished little. "I am like the old, old star that died so long ago, so far away, that its last light is only reaching our eyes today," he says to the rhinoceros. "They fall in on themselves, you know, those dead stars, they go cold and invisible, even though we think we are seeing them in the night sky." This is a poignant thought, put poetically by the funny, enjoyable Gottesman, yet...