false 36620021 817278 68021 0060509066 9780060509064 304 52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170684442m/68021.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68021.The_Birthday_of_the_World_And_Other_Stories 874602 3.93 48362 4118 5 1 false Mon Nov 03 23:50:11 -0800 2008 Fri Oct 31 07:42:23 -0700 2008 Mon Nov 03 23:50:11 -0800 2008
This collection of stories explores a variety of worlds. It takes us back to the world of "The Left Hand of Darkness," where the inhabitants are genderless most of the time, only becoming male or female for short periods of time, and explores how exactly that works in a coming-of-age story. She writes a sequence about a world in which there are 16 women to each man, exploring the anguish and pain the social customs that developed cause people. In one of my favorites, she creates a world entirely of introverts, a world with no "people," only "persons" who meet only briefly and speak only rarely. She gives us a world where marriages are made in sets of four people, two men and two women (each member has one male lover, one female lover, and one taboo opposite-sex partner), and delicately explores the complications of such an arrangement. And she goes back to the world of "Four Ways to Forgiveness" to explore slavery again in a truly heartbreaking story filled with echoes both of American slavery and atrocities at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

LeGuin's writing is notable for both its deep and humane compassion and its unflinching clarity of vision. Each story has a bleak tenderness at its heart, a true love for each character and a deep grief for the limitations of humanity. Highly recommended.]]>