If GR had ten stars I would put them all in Lavinia’s crown.
Because I love to read, I’ve read some fairly inept as well as amazingly ept
books. I’m sure, if I thought about it really hard, I could come up with
another that equals Lavinia – but right now I just cannot.
And the only other Le Guin book I treasure is Steering the
Craft, a handbook for writers. Early
on, when I was too callow, I decided I didn’t like science fiction or fantasy
genres. I just couldn’t keep track of the names of places and planets I suppose
so I never was one who knew Le Guin’s major epics. I did read a biography or
perhaps it was an autobiography and was respectful of her life.
Is this a review? Here’s an interview from 2008 when the
book came out that says it: http://inkwellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/sing-muse-of-woman-unsung.html.
Hope you can read Le Guin’s comments there.
I remember Vergil, from Dante, and vaguely from The Aeneid
in high school. But this is the great mature work of an incredible master of
the craft who decides in her seventies to re-learn Latin, take all her skills
of making a story sing, adds magical effects and leaves us flying like a white
owl through the woods enlightened.
Not once do cheap emotional writerly tricks torture the
reader. We could smell and taste the daily life of pre-Rome/Etruscans. Le Guin
calls it ‘making the story thick.” We know those women, although they lived in
a poet’s vision of thirteenth century BCE. We feel the texture of their
clothes, the married love, sun light on a real hero’s chest as he holds his
baby.
LeGuin’s whole novel springs from one slight mention: Lavinia, second wife of Aeneus who
escaped the physical destruction of Troy.
Do you get it that the authoring awes me? By the concept of
the book? By the book itself? It has been respectfully designed and published.
It’s a thorough treasure. A strong woman touching us comes across the ages.
Highly recommend. Now to read it again.
