2011 Reading #9: The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin

[snurri]

1. Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution In Music by Marisa Meltzer.
2. The Patriot Witch (Book One of the Traitor to the Crown trilogy) by C.C. Finlay.
3. Power Girl: A New Beginning and Power Girl: Aliens and Apes by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner.
4. Strangers On a Train by Patricia Highsmith.
5 and 6. Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet by Gregory Frost.
7. Cap Wigington: An Architectural Legacy in Ice and Stone by David Vassar Taylor and Paul Clifford Larson.
8. The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss.

9. The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin. This is the last of the Hainish/Ekumen books so far, unless The Eye of the Heron falls in the same universe, but Le Guin herself doesn't seem sure of that. It's also the one I've read that comments most directly on our world and our time. The Earth that Sutty, an Ekumen Observer, comes from is one that's been torn to pieces by religious violence; she finds an echo of that on Aka, where the Corporation State has done its best to wipe out history, literature, and all the traditional ways from before contact with the Ekumen. At the novel's start Sutty is so broken down by personal heartbreak and the impossibility of doing her job in a place where culture is forbidden that I found her difficult to like; but as she discovers the hidden layers of the Telling on her journey outside the capital city, she herself begins to open and to change. This is simultaneously a gentle and powerful book, leisurely paced, where the action is in interaction and education--possibly it's the sort of book that only Le Guin can get away with, but that's only because she makes it work.

Comments

[czakbar.livejournal.com]

I read this book when it first came out. I'm a regular fan of Le Guin's, and I remember this book but not as vividly as some of her others. I remember the basic plot you describe, but it didn't leave me with the same deeply scored impression of place and character as Left Hand or Dispossessed did. I think maybe your observation that the beginning, with Sutty locked out of culture, making her difficult to like for a while, is part of it. But what I do remember liking was the way she participates in the telling, the teaching, the sharing of a hidden culture the corporation state wants to erase. It really is very connected to our present. And yep, not many people can get away with writing the sort of books she does. And she does make them work. I'm always in awe of her. Even when she's written something that isn't as strong as some other work of hers, it's still really strong.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

The book struck me, in some ways, as a revisitation of earlier worlds and themes, but through a slightly different perspective--sort of a palimpsest, with other books of the Ekumen/Hainish cycle showing through in parts. (That could be because I've been reading them all in fairly quick succession, of course.) It's also got some almost mystical touches that suggest a more relaxed approach to internal logic and structure. I have the feeling that as soon as I finish reading all these books I'm going to want to re-read them all right away!