(no subject)
Tomorrow morning I depart on the first stage of our family vacation across this country and into the next one. Farewell to all of you, have a wonderful few weeks, and I'll see those of you in Albany upon my return. I leave you with a book recommendation and review:
Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
There are a few authors from whom I expect great things no matter what the format or content of the story in question is. Ursula Le Guin is one of those writers, and Lavinia doesn’t disappoint.
The book is a re-telling of the second half of the Aeneid, told from the point of view of Lavinia. If you do not know who this woman is, that’s because she has no spoken lines in the entire epic-and yet, a war is fought over her. Specifically, over Aeneas’ right to marry her, or perhaps more accurately over her father promising her in marriage to Aeneas when a local prince wants her for himself.
Le Guin gives Lavinia life, creating a personality and motivations for her based on detailed historical research, careful reading between Vergil’s lines, and imagination. Lavinia, telling her story in the first person, gives the Aeneid a new dimension that fits in seamlessly and logically with the original work. She is a fascinatingly human character, speaking with passion, determination, and the wisdom of hindsight and age.
But Le Guin does more than just give Lavinia a voice. Instead of simply writing a story about the characters from the Aeneid, she writes a story about writing itself. Vergil’s epic doesn’t exist until over a millennium after the events of the story, but its presence is wound over, under, and through the story. Vergil is a character in the book, albeit no more than a shade in an oracle’s grove, but his presence is crucial. The story is about the nature of fiction, and of the poet as maker, while simultaneously being about the impacts of an epic on human beings’ lives.
The book is not without its questionable bits, but I think those are entirely deliberate. Lavinia is intelligent, level-headed, and capable of learning from the mistakes of herself and others, but she is not an entirely reliable narrator. Her narration is colored by her personal opinions and cultural ideals, a feat that takes a fair amount of authorial skill to pull off in any meaningful way. Le Guin does it brilliantly, letting Lavinia speak as a woman within her own semi-mythological, semi-historical society, and as a woman with her own personal thoughts and opinions. At times it makes for a rather narrow and occasionally startling focus (it would be fascinating to read some of the chapters from, for example, Ascanius’ point of view, and perhaps make for a completely different story), but in terms of this particular book, it works very well.
I highly recommend this book, especially for anyone with any knowledge of or interest in Roman history and mythology. Or, indeed, for anyone who wants to develop their interest and knowledge.
Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
There are a few authors from whom I expect great things no matter what the format or content of the story in question is. Ursula Le Guin is one of those writers, and Lavinia doesn’t disappoint.
The book is a re-telling of the second half of the Aeneid, told from the point of view of Lavinia. If you do not know who this woman is, that’s because she has no spoken lines in the entire epic-and yet, a war is fought over her. Specifically, over Aeneas’ right to marry her, or perhaps more accurately over her father promising her in marriage to Aeneas when a local prince wants her for himself.
Le Guin gives Lavinia life, creating a personality and motivations for her based on detailed historical research, careful reading between Vergil’s lines, and imagination. Lavinia, telling her story in the first person, gives the Aeneid a new dimension that fits in seamlessly and logically with the original work. She is a fascinatingly human character, speaking with passion, determination, and the wisdom of hindsight and age.
But Le Guin does more than just give Lavinia a voice. Instead of simply writing a story about the characters from the Aeneid, she writes a story about writing itself. Vergil’s epic doesn’t exist until over a millennium after the events of the story, but its presence is wound over, under, and through the story. Vergil is a character in the book, albeit no more than a shade in an oracle’s grove, but his presence is crucial. The story is about the nature of fiction, and of the poet as maker, while simultaneously being about the impacts of an epic on human beings’ lives.
The book is not without its questionable bits, but I think those are entirely deliberate. Lavinia is intelligent, level-headed, and capable of learning from the mistakes of herself and others, but she is not an entirely reliable narrator. Her narration is colored by her personal opinions and cultural ideals, a feat that takes a fair amount of authorial skill to pull off in any meaningful way. Le Guin does it brilliantly, letting Lavinia speak as a woman within her own semi-mythological, semi-historical society, and as a woman with her own personal thoughts and opinions. At times it makes for a rather narrow and occasionally startling focus (it would be fascinating to read some of the chapters from, for example, Ascanius’ point of view, and perhaps make for a completely different story), but in terms of this particular book, it works very well.
I highly recommend this book, especially for anyone with any knowledge of or interest in Roman history and mythology. Or, indeed, for anyone who wants to develop their interest and knowledge.