A review by mmparker
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin

4.0

This took me a long long time to read, in large part because I started out reading it as a compilation, instead of as a unified work. It *is* a compilation - but it's better read as a novel. You really have to develop and remember a sense of the Kesh to get the most of each component, and the ordering of stories is intentional.

It's a strange, unsettling, wonderful anthropological study of a people that doesn't exist, but drawing heavily on people who have existed. It's unbelievably rich and thoroughly thought-out (there's a CD of songs and poems, for God's sake). It's also maybe kinda self-indulgent.

If you really like LeGuin, you'll enjoy it.

A strange and painful book to read in October 2017, while the Valley burns.