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55th out of 345 books
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440 voters
Lavinia
In a richly imagined, beautiful new novel, an acclaimed writer gives an epic heroine her voice
In The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome wa...more
In The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome wa...more
Hardcover, First Edition, 288 pages
Published
April 21st 2008
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
(first published 2008)
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Jul 08, 2008
Libby
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
classicists with a yen for historical fiction
Recommended to Libby by:
The Onion AV Club
Back when I studied Latin, we were given bits of Virgil's "Aeneid" to translate. I always found it to be a chore, as poetry is more challenging to translate than textbook translating exercises like "Roma est in Italia." Still, I thought I knew the piece sufficiently until hearing that Ursula Le Guin had written a book about a character from "Aeneid" but having no idea who Lavinia was. Having now read "Aeneid" in its translated entirety, I can't really fault myself for not remembering Lavinia. Sh...more
In Virgil's Aeneid, Lavinia never utters a word; in LeGuin's tale, Lavinia breathes an entire culture to life. This is not some sort of hammer feminist re-imagining: Lavinia is no warrior daughter of Latinium, subduing Aeneus with flaming arrows and other male-fantasy ways. She is a woman of her place and time, pious (in the original sense of the word), free in the bondage of ritual, religion, work and life.
LaGuin is now 79, and her narrative has a watchful quality about it, reflexive. Lavinia...more
LaGuin is now 79, and her narrative has a watchful quality about it, reflexive. Lavinia...more
29 likes · like · see review
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Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my LOCUS FANTASY list.
As the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners list treated me so kindly, I figure I’ll trust those same good folk to pick me some stars in their sister-list, the Locus Fantasy Award winners.
Having never read any Le Guin before, I was a little unsure...more
4 likes · like · see review
Jan 03, 2010
Shayne
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Le Guin fans, people with an interest in mythology
I gave this book four stars for its credible evocation of a very different time and place; for the feeling it gave of research thoroughly done but applied with a light hand; and most of all for the beauty of Le Guin's prose. The lady simply has a way with words.
Lavinia never speaks a word in The Aeneid; Le Guin gives her a voice. She also has Lavinia muse on her own status as the creation of a poet, and the form of limited immortality her incomplete rendering gives her. The book can be read as a...more
Lavinia never speaks a word in The Aeneid; Le Guin gives her a voice. She also has Lavinia muse on her own status as the creation of a poet, and the form of limited immortality her incomplete rendering gives her. The book can be read as a...more
“I am not the feminine voice you may have expected”
When my father told me that Ursula LeGuin had put out a new novel, I was, as I usually am, ecstatic. LeGuin is one of my all time favorite authors, and I can’t think of time when she’s written something that has somehow failed to engage, entertain, or intrigue me. The fact that she was, apparently, riffing off Virgil’s Aeneid was just icing on the cake for this poor excuse for a classical studies major.
When the book arrived, I found myself looki...more
14 likes · like · see review
It's interesting to contrast this with Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad. Both explore one of the Big Classics (The Aeneid in LeGuin's case, the Odyssey in Atwood's) from a female character's perspective. LeGuin and Atwood are both stellar writers, but I enjoyed Lavinia vastly more. LeGuin seems to have a real affection for her characters, and that makes for a warmer, more humane book.
You can't tackle such a project without exploring the constraints placed on women in ancient times, but again, the a...more
You can't tackle such a project without exploring the constraints placed on women in ancient times, but again, the a...more
10 likes · like · see review
I thought this book was boring. There, I said it. Even though it had passion, war, bloodshed, royal intrigue, suicide, I found it boring and it was difficult for me to convince myself to continue reading it. I am a classic history buff, which this novel has loads of, but it still couldn't grip my interest. The tone of the book was quiet and ghostly, very in the past so I never felt anything immediate. It was a story told by someone who remembered facts, places, names, etc. and spoke of emotion,...more
16 likes · like · see review
I loved this book for its wisdom and its tenderness and for the spare, elegant richness of its language. Stories have been pouring out of Le Guin these last few years, as if the ripeness of her words must be shared. We are so grateful.
Le Guin riffs off the Aeneid by expanding into its own book the story of Vergil's minor character Lavinia, Italian daughter of King Latinus and Queen Amata. (As such, fits into a particular genre, along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, of books that amplify a minor character from a famous book.) The reader meets Lavinia before Aeneas's landing in Italy, and follows her story through the war of Trojans and Italians and into the reign of Ascanius.
Le Guin plays up the indebtedness angle...more
Le Guin plays up the indebtedness angle...more
This retelling of Virgil's Aeneid from Lavina's point of view is blissfully mythic. I often prefer ancient world to medieval fantasy, because people in the ancient world experienced life through a mythic mindset, or so I believe. Like you could say the Australian aboriginal dreamtime was real, because those people used it to navigate their world, the mythic world of Vesta, Juno, and Mars was real because the Latins' mental model of the world revolved around them.
Ursula Le Guin really worked at h...more
Ursula Le Guin really worked at h...more
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Oct 05, 2008
Molly
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
people who are already intimately familiar with the Aeneid.
I have spent far too much time with the Aeneid and when I heard about this book, I couldn't help but read it. Some of the characters (ex: Amata, Ascanius) were not at all as I expected them to be because the author took some liberties that seemed a little inconsistant with what I remembered from my reading of Vergil. (I don't think I'm spoiling too much when I say that Ascanius is not as angelic as you'd expect him to be and it seems that Amata's madness began long before the Trojans showed up.)...more
I'm a huge fan of Ursula K. LeGuin, but this is not her best book. She is a giant in the fantasy-sci-fi field, with books like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Earthsea Trilogy, but Lavinia is only the second half of a great story. It's a brilliant concept; she takes a character mentioned in passing in Virgil's Aeneid, the wife of Aeneas, and creates a story around her. But she should have jumped in with both feet and defined a whole world, as only she can do. Instead, the story keeps nervously...more
The premise of the story is that it takes part of the Aenid by Virgil, and tells it from Lavinia's point of view. The result was a bit disappointing. There was a lot to like -- loved the research done on the time, and how it was NOT set in an opulent kingdom, but a realistic-feeling provincial, even poor area. Also, when LeGuin is on a role, her words and word images are poetry themselves. She creates a sympathetic character in Lavinia, who's plight could define the phrase "caught between a rock...more
LeGuin's book is less a novel than a commentary on the Aeneid in unconventional form. One cannot read this without having read Virgil's poem, and one really ought to have read it recently. It is very talky, and some of LeGuin's choices deliberately subvert the story's narrative potential. Where it shines is in the sense of place LeGuin creates, and her strong sense of early Roman religious values. LeGuin strips from the setting Virgil's anachronistic "Augustan magnificence", as she puts it, and...more
Feb 05, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
Nearing 80, Le Guin has written a stunning book that melds meticulous research (according to one critic, perhaps too much) with her trademark imagination and engaging, spot-on prose into a tale that Virgil himself might have appreciated. Lavinia benefits from the ideas and the world building of Le Guin's earlier SF/Fantasy efforts, as well as her passion, cultivated over the last decade or so, for the Latin language (she read several lines of The Aeneid a day in the original to prepare for the n
...more
Don't go reading Le Guin expecting Koontz. Lavinia's character was handled with grace and imagination. But there was very little plot. I guess I should say, I kept waiting for the climax, and it never happened. While discussing this with my husband, he said, "Isn't that just like life? You think it's going somewhere, then it's just over." As depressing as that sounds, it's still a good book. None of the Margaret Atwood or Marion Zimmer Bradley anachronistic feminism here. Lavinia was refreshing...more
This is the kind of book that makes you wish you'd had a classical education. LeGuin takes a minor character from the Aeneid and fleshes her out with the story she should have had. I wasn't actually in the mood for a war story, but the details of the life of this ancestor of Rome are fascinating. What really made this story stand out was Lavinia's relationship to Vergil who contacts her in sacred space, blurring the lines between legend/fiction/reality.
Oct 25, 2011
El Templo de las Mil Puertas
added it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
13-eltemplo,
no-solo-para-adultos
"El Lacio, siglo XIII a.C. Lavinia, hija de Latino, rey de Laurentum, debe casarse, y sus pretendientes pelean por ella. Pero Lavinia puede oír a los espíritus y en sueños ve a Virgilio, quien le advierte de que no debe casarse con un hombre del Lacio sino con un extranjero que llegará por el río. Así, Lavinia espera la llegada de Eneas, que desde su huida de Troya vaga por el Mediterráneo, pero no todos sus pretendientes están contentos con la elección. En esta novela, ganadora del premio Locus...more
I've read every novel by Le Guin and a lot of her stories and poetry as well. Lavinia is a strong addition to her canon, although I miss some of the mind-bending ambiguity and mind-opening creativity of her earlier works. Lavinia is beautiful story and a tour de force because of what she sees in the Aeneid and does with it. Still, to call a novel truly I great I have to see more complex characters and tragic irony than I find in Lavinia.
I read all her other works around 1998 and 1999 and was ins...more
I read all her other works around 1998 and 1999 and was ins...more
I thought this was actually kind of boring. Lavinia, the narrator, who appears as a minor character in the Aeneid as the eventual wife of Aeneas, is removed in years from the events of the book, and I felt that this removal in time made its way into the story itself, making it more of a history written at a distance, then an actual gripping story. And so exciting events would be reduced to dry description or twenty years would suddenly pass. All this, along with the extremely explicit foreshadow...more
In Le Guin’s novel, Vergilius (aka Vergil) visits Lavinia, the wife of Aeneas, who is a character in his epic poem The Aeneid. Vergil appears in the guise of a ghost and acknowledges he dismissively depicted her as “ripe to wed” and described her wedding procession but not her reign as queen.
Le Guin then expands the story of The Aeneid, Book 7 from Lavinia’s viewpoint. Interesting construct: Lavinia narrates her life in the present as Vergil visits her as a ghost from the future, even though to...more
Le Guin then expands the story of The Aeneid, Book 7 from Lavinia’s viewpoint. Interesting construct: Lavinia narrates her life in the present as Vergil visits her as a ghost from the future, even though to...more
Despite Jenna's fears of the room overflowing, it was just a normal book group, with most of the usual people. (Carolyn was missing, stuck in Paris, which was a shame, as I think that she would have enjoyed it. Although being stuck in Paris probably isn't too much of a hardship.) We did a first round around the table, as we usually do, then the author got her turn. She hadn't intended on writing a novel. She'd taken Latin in high-school and hadn't been allowed to read any poetry, instead spendin...more
Jan 14, 2013
Mary Overton
added it
From Le Guin's "Afterword":
"The setting, story, and characters of this novel are based on the last six books of Vergil's epic poem the AENEID.
"....
"My desire was to follow Vergil, not to improve or reprove him. But Lavinia herself sometimes insisted that the poet was mistaken - about the color of her hair, for instance. And being a novelist and wordy, I enlarged upon and interpreted and filled in many corners of his spare, splendid story. But I left out a good deal, too. The palaces and tiaras,...more
"The setting, story, and characters of this novel are based on the last six books of Vergil's epic poem the AENEID.
"....
"My desire was to follow Vergil, not to improve or reprove him. But Lavinia herself sometimes insisted that the poet was mistaken - about the color of her hair, for instance. And being a novelist and wordy, I enlarged upon and interpreted and filled in many corners of his spare, splendid story. But I left out a good deal, too. The palaces and tiaras,...more
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 did not like reading science fiction or fantasy genres. I just could not keep track of the names...more
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 did not like reading science fiction or fantasy genres. I just could not keep track of the names...more
I'm as big an Ursula LeGuin fan as you'll find -- I even loved "Always Coming Home," which usually isn't listed as one of her masterworks -- but "Lavinia" wasn't quite up to her usual standards.
And let me make it clear it's not because "Lavinia" is historical fiction, a genre I love, especially when it's about the ancient world. In this case, LeGuin uses the last six books of Vergil's "Aeneid" as the basis for her story, but instead of the hero's point of view, we get Lavinia. Not having read th...more
And let me make it clear it's not because "Lavinia" is historical fiction, a genre I love, especially when it's about the ancient world. In this case, LeGuin uses the last six books of Vergil's "Aeneid" as the basis for her story, but instead of the hero's point of view, we get Lavinia. Not having read th...more
This reminded me a great deal of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, only without the latter book's atmosphere of overwhelming sadness.
Lavinia tells the story of Virgil's Aeneid from the perspective of Aeneas' Latin wife. In Virgil's original poem, Lavinia is mentioned almost in passing and has no dialogue of her own. Rather than rewrite the story of the Aenied, Le Guin has instead expanded upon it, giving us no only Lavinia's perspective on the events in the poem but also her experiences before...more
Lavinia tells the story of Virgil's Aeneid from the perspective of Aeneas' Latin wife. In Virgil's original poem, Lavinia is mentioned almost in passing and has no dialogue of her own. Rather than rewrite the story of the Aenied, Le Guin has instead expanded upon it, giving us no only Lavinia's perspective on the events in the poem but also her experiences before...more
Lavinia
By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Kings, Queens, back in the days. That doesn't sound very interesting does it? But this book is okay. I'm not really that big into back in the days book. But this book is different, it helped me understand The Inferno a bit.
Lavinia, the main character of the book, is daughter of King Latinus. As a princess, she probably got everything she wanted, and she was spoiled. Errrnn, you're wrong. Lavinia's mother doesn't love her at all. She thinks that Lavinia was the one who...more
By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Kings, Queens, back in the days. That doesn't sound very interesting does it? But this book is okay. I'm not really that big into back in the days book. But this book is different, it helped me understand The Inferno a bit.
Lavinia, the main character of the book, is daughter of King Latinus. As a princess, she probably got everything she wanted, and she was spoiled. Errrnn, you're wrong. Lavinia's mother doesn't love her at all. She thinks that Lavinia was the one who...more
Lavinia is an oddity in the sf world*: a slow and thoughtful book. it's also a beautifully written slow and thoughtful book, as one must expect from Ursula K. Le Guin--she don't write no dogs.
the most interesting thing about this book to me was the very quiet rebellion Lavinia herself stages. she's a young girl in a time when girls didn't have any real power with which to fight--Lavinia's only power is to say no, until she is willing to say yes. when the time comes that she's expected to marry,...more
the most interesting thing about this book to me was the very quiet rebellion Lavinia herself stages. she's a young girl in a time when girls didn't have any real power with which to fight--Lavinia's only power is to say no, until she is willing to say yes. when the time comes that she's expected to marry,...more
This is a very comfortable book, an easy read that is nonetheless full of enough depth and meaning to make it well worth the reading. It does not give us any great insights or impress us as a work to be revered, perhaps, but tells a grand story is a conversational tone that makes it a pleasure to give our time to it.
The story is of Lavinia, a minor, voiceless character in Vergil's Aeneid who became the titular character's last queen. She tells the tale in the first person and gives us a picture...more
The story is of Lavinia, a minor, voiceless character in Vergil's Aeneid who became the titular character's last queen. She tells the tale in the first person and gives us a picture...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Always Coming Home : Lavinia | 22 | 22 | Jun 16, 2012 05:15pm |
As of 2011, Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-one novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. Forthcoming...more
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