alexsbooksandsocks's review against another edition
Lavinia, wat kan ik zeggen, wat een mooi verhaal. Ik liet dit boek veel te lang op mijn tbr liggen. Misschien voelde ik onbewust al aan dat dit boek, dit verhaal, deze vrouw, mijn onverdeelde aandacht moest krijgen. Dit is zo een mooi verhaal over een sterke vrouw. De schrijfstijl is alles wat een verhaal van dit kaliber nodig heeft. Ik geloofde elke woord. Ik geloofde elke zin die de auteur neergeschreven heeft. Mythologie en het oude Rome gewikkeld in een met momenten literaire schrijfstijl. Het hoofdpersonage haar gedachten, haar doen en laten, dit is écht Lavinias verhaal. Haar tijd. Dit boek is Lavinia. Als je op zoekt bent naar een boek over mythologie en die historische tijd met een vrouwelijk personage en haar lot in de hoofdrol dan is dit boek dé aanbeveling.
saraberkes's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
5.0
This book was beautiful and such a creative concept. Everything I read from Ursula K Le Guin just makes me love her work more.
cryo_guy's review against another edition
5.0
"She's pious." By that word I meant responsible, faithful to duty, open to awe.
~
This book is extremely cool. If you've ever read the Aeneid or plan to, or read a summary or are interested in Roman mythology, this book is for you. Le Guin adds her personal flavor to a very well-researched, but not cumbersomely so take on the Aeneid. It's an excellent book and a much better modern novel/alternate take on mythology than anything you will find out there (I'm looking at you Miller, and that other guy whose name I can't even remember).
My only complaint is one Le Guin addresses in her afterward: "The Homeric use of quarrelsome deities to motivate, illuminate, and interfere with human choices and emotions doesn't work well in a novel, so the Greco-Roman gods, an intrinsic element of the poem, are no part of my story."
This is both fair and unfair. Fair because she admits they are an intrinsic element of the poem. Unfair for two reasons-
1. She should have said "modern" novel. The issue is that we moderns are too committed to our idea of free will and agency and so we don't understand it when our novels don't follow suit. Deny it all you like, it's the truth. But I think this is kind of what she means when she says novel. She should have stated it explicitly.
2. It can work well, you just didn't try hard enough. Who am I to say this esteemed and brilliant author didn't try hard enough? Nobody. But the answer is obvious enough. Modern authors need to write books that sell. And fortunately Le Guin can, and did with this, write books that are both good and accessible. That is not my point here. I don't know that anyone has tried to put the quarrelsome gods of Greco-Roman myth into a modern novel. I certainly haven't read such a book. But I do not think that it is impossible and I do not think that it cannot work. It would take some work (which is why I say she didn't try hard enough), but I believe that it can be done. However, the real reason that I feel the need to say this is not because I want to say Le Guin didn't try hard enough (I'm sure Iuppiter has his lightning aimed at my head right now, such is my hubris), it's that the quarrelsome gods are not separate from a robust picture of how the ancient Greeks and Romans lived, their culture and reality, their world. And so there it is. You can do a really good job without them; you can write a brilliant story that captures the essence of who they were and how they lived--I know, because Le Guin has done it with this very book!--but you'll never get all of it, if we can agree that nothing can be perfect, but that this reconstituted puzzle would never be the feasible-just-short-of-perfect that we might hold up as perfection. And I will say again, it would be no mean feat to immerse the modern reader in the duplicate agency of ancient minds. But not impossible, says this hubristic nobody.
So what else? Not only is it a lovely book in terms of replicating the fabricated world Vergil created in his poem, the cultures, the Greeks, the Romans, but it is also a very good modern novel (especially of the subgenre of alternate mythologies, etc.). I might offer one more minor complaint about the romance, but it is so fitting for the novel that what do I have to complain about? If I met the poet who created my world, I would probably fall in love with him too (or her). At least if it were Vergil, I would.
Lavinia is a really wonderful protagonist. The pacing is great. I lament poor Ascanius' fate, but it seems fitting. It all seemed very fitting.
I do believe this is a book I will keep on my shelf for a long time.
~
This book is extremely cool. If you've ever read the Aeneid or plan to, or read a summary or are interested in Roman mythology, this book is for you. Le Guin adds her personal flavor to a very well-researched, but not cumbersomely so take on the Aeneid. It's an excellent book and a much better modern novel/alternate take on mythology than anything you will find out there (I'm looking at you Miller, and that other guy whose name I can't even remember).
My only complaint is one Le Guin addresses in her afterward: "The Homeric use of quarrelsome deities to motivate, illuminate, and interfere with human choices and emotions doesn't work well in a novel, so the Greco-Roman gods, an intrinsic element of the poem, are no part of my story."
This is both fair and unfair. Fair because she admits they are an intrinsic element of the poem. Unfair for two reasons-
1. She should have said "modern" novel. The issue is that we moderns are too committed to our idea of free will and agency and so we don't understand it when our novels don't follow suit. Deny it all you like, it's the truth. But I think this is kind of what she means when she says novel. She should have stated it explicitly.
2. It can work well, you just didn't try hard enough. Who am I to say this esteemed and brilliant author didn't try hard enough? Nobody. But the answer is obvious enough. Modern authors need to write books that sell. And fortunately Le Guin can, and did with this, write books that are both good and accessible. That is not my point here. I don't know that anyone has tried to put the quarrelsome gods of Greco-Roman myth into a modern novel. I certainly haven't read such a book. But I do not think that it is impossible and I do not think that it cannot work. It would take some work (which is why I say she didn't try hard enough), but I believe that it can be done. However, the real reason that I feel the need to say this is not because I want to say Le Guin didn't try hard enough (I'm sure Iuppiter has his lightning aimed at my head right now, such is my hubris), it's that the quarrelsome gods are not separate from a robust picture of how the ancient Greeks and Romans lived, their culture and reality, their world. And so there it is. You can do a really good job without them; you can write a brilliant story that captures the essence of who they were and how they lived--I know, because Le Guin has done it with this very book!--but you'll never get all of it, if we can agree that nothing can be perfect, but that this reconstituted puzzle would never be the feasible-just-short-of-perfect that we might hold up as perfection. And I will say again, it would be no mean feat to immerse the modern reader in the duplicate agency of ancient minds. But not impossible, says this hubristic nobody.
So what else? Not only is it a lovely book in terms of replicating the fabricated world Vergil created in his poem, the cultures, the Greeks, the Romans, but it is also a very good modern novel (especially of the subgenre of alternate mythologies, etc.). I might offer one more minor complaint about the romance, but it is so fitting for the novel that what do I have to complain about? If I met the poet who created my world, I would probably fall in love with him too (or her). At least if it were Vergil, I would.
Lavinia is a really wonderful protagonist. The pacing is great. I lament poor Ascanius' fate, but it seems fitting. It all seemed very fitting.
I do believe this is a book I will keep on my shelf for a long time.
justiceofkalr's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting take on a minor character. I'm not really sure what I think about the time-traveling Virgil and Lavinia's seeming awareness of being a character though. It was an interesting idea, but it seemed kind of out of joint at times.
amanda_bowman016's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
elros451's review against another edition
5.0
I don't know if this will ever be my favorite of LeGuin's works but it's kind of impossible for here not to get 5 stars. Highlights this time around were the historical setting and how well LeGuin portrayed her main character at many different stages of her life. I also found the narrative conceit, of Lavinia being aware that she herself is a character, to be incredibly effective.
sonofatreus's review against another edition
5.0
Vergil is said to have wanted his famous poem, the Aeneid, to be burned shortly before his death because he would die before he could finish it. Needless to say, it was not burned. But its incomplete nature has been a sticking point for years among readers. The abrupt ending is but one sign that this was true.
Le Guin, in her Afterword, says that she thinks Vergil at least ended it how he wanted, even if other parts seems unfinished. As she says, Lavinia is more an attempt to translate the Aeneid than it is an attempt to finish it. The original Latin, she says, is among the best poetry ever written, and so translating can be difficult, which is why she chose to translate it to a different form. In this, I think she exceptionally succeeded.
She captures the spirit of the original poem, but comes at it from another angle by having Lavinia be the main point of view. Even though Lavinia meets Vergil, as a sort of vision, she is not totally omniscient. She has some awareness of herself as a character in the poem (see some of my highlights), but not enough to be entirely in control of the narrative. At the same time, Le Guin does a great job weaving the events of the Aeneid into her story so that someone who hasn't read can still follow Lavinia's story.
Perhaps most impressively, Le Guin doesn't linger on Aeneas. He comes and goes — and certainly has a big part when he's there — from Lavinia's life, but this is very much her story, not his. This let Le Guin explore multiple different cultures (early Roman, Latin, Etruscan, and Trojan mostly) in ways that a story on Aeneas might not have. At the same time, focusing on Lavinia, daughter of Latinus and almost-wife of Turnus, also brings in different aspects of social life. As a woman, she is of lesser status than the men, but as a princess, she has more access to power than other women.
I'm not really sure what else to say about this. Unlike some other modern adaptations of ancient myth, especially ones that pick a female character not spotlighted in antiquity, Le Guin really captured the feeling of ancient stories. Her characters' concerns were those in the Aeneid, or at least the seem like they could have been. It's worth saying that Lavinia is a relatively minor character in the Aeneid, even if her existence has serious consequences for the poem. Le Guin turned Lavinia into what felt like a fully fleshed out character, and one that might have fit into the Aeneid or another ancient work.
Le Guin, in her Afterword, says that she thinks Vergil at least ended it how he wanted, even if other parts seems unfinished. As she says, Lavinia is more an attempt to translate the Aeneid than it is an attempt to finish it. The original Latin, she says, is among the best poetry ever written, and so translating can be difficult, which is why she chose to translate it to a different form. In this, I think she exceptionally succeeded.
She captures the spirit of the original poem, but comes at it from another angle by having Lavinia be the main point of view. Even though Lavinia meets Vergil, as a sort of vision, she is not totally omniscient. She has some awareness of herself as a character in the poem (see some of my highlights), but not enough to be entirely in control of the narrative. At the same time, Le Guin does a great job weaving the events of the Aeneid into her story so that someone who hasn't read can still follow Lavinia's story.
Perhaps most impressively, Le Guin doesn't linger on Aeneas. He comes and goes — and certainly has a big part when he's there — from Lavinia's life, but this is very much her story, not his. This let Le Guin explore multiple different cultures (early Roman, Latin, Etruscan, and Trojan mostly) in ways that a story on Aeneas might not have. At the same time, focusing on Lavinia, daughter of Latinus and almost-wife of Turnus, also brings in different aspects of social life. As a woman, she is of lesser status than the men, but as a princess, she has more access to power than other women.
I'm not really sure what else to say about this. Unlike some other modern adaptations of ancient myth, especially ones that pick a female character not spotlighted in antiquity, Le Guin really captured the feeling of ancient stories. Her characters' concerns were those in the Aeneid, or at least the seem like they could have been. It's worth saying that Lavinia is a relatively minor character in the Aeneid, even if her existence has serious consequences for the poem. Le Guin turned Lavinia into what felt like a fully fleshed out character, and one that might have fit into the Aeneid or another ancient work.
chirson's review against another edition
3.0
Myślę, że będąc młodsza, doceniłabym tę powieść bardziej, bo trafiałaby w tematy, które bardzo mnie fascynowały. Teraz trochę się rozminęła z moimi zainteresowaniami, ale doceniam kunszt, z którym snuta jest historia/herstoria i świetnie skonstruowany głos protagonistki. Trochę żałuję, że powieść nie odważa się na bardziej śmiałe zabiegi - na głębsze wejście w codzienność (jak w Hildzie) albo na jawniejszą i mniej realistyczną intertekstualność i metahistoriografię. Wydawała mi się trochę zawieszona pomiędzy, i pewnie taki był cel.
Bardzo doceniam nastrój; teraz chciałabym wrócić do jakiejś znanej już sobie Le Guin.
Bardzo doceniam nastrój; teraz chciałabym wrócić do jakiejś znanej już sobie Le Guin.
jahalli's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75