Five Novels: The Lathe of Heaven / The Eye of the Heron / The Beginning Place / Searoad / Lavinia

Library of America #379

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Together for the first time, all 5 standalone novels from the Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer who reinvented science fiction, including one restored to print.

This 7th volume in the definitive Library of America edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's works presents 5 remarkable standalone novels that showcase her boundless creativity and literary range. Spans from the 1971 classic The Lathe of Heaven to her career-crowning 2008 masterpiece Lavinia.

In the Locus Award-winning The Lathe of Heaven (1971), one of Le Guin's most admired works of science fiction, George Orr begins have effective dreams: dreams that change reality itself. But when he turns to the sleep researcher William Haber for help, the doctor sees an opportunity to use Orr's strange gift for his own ends.

A former Terran prison colony on the planet Victoria seems destined for revolution in The Eye of the Heron (1978), when the authoritarian leaders in the City try to assert control over the peaceful farmers who have been sent to live around them.

The Beginning Place (1980) is a parable-like story in which Hugh and Irena have both found their way to the Beginning Place, a gateway to another world. The two initially become enemies, but must learn to work together when the utopia they've found turns out to have a shadow.

The long out-of-print Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand (1991) is a Winesburg-like series of linked stories set in a small vacation town on the Oregon coast, where some of the characters have come for a weekend and some for longer, but all are pilgrims in the grip of inexpressible longings.

And Le Guin's final, powerfully feminist novel, Lavinia (2008), reimagines Virgil's Aeneid from the perspective of a woman who, in poet's telling, never speaks a word.

Special features include an appendix presenting three essays by Le Guin related to the novels, previously unseen hand-drawn maps by author herself, helpful annotation and a chronology of Le guin's life and career.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Anthologies

1000 pages, Hardcover

Published February 6, 2024

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two 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. She lived in Portland, Oregon.

She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Reviews

[Unreliable NarraTBR · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a mixed bag for me. I loved the first two novels and couldn't get farther than 50% into the last three. Eye of the Heron's a sleeper hit.

[Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gobsmackingly brilliant. Had seen the television adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven ages ago and totally forgot what a moving mindfuck it is. The story of a dreamer whose dreams can literally change reality, the therapist who takes advantage of him, and the woman the dreamer comes to love. It's less sci-fi than sci-fi adjacent (aliens are dreamed up), but philosophically engrossing from start to finish. The Eye of the Heron is a tight little class war fable, replete with meditations on nonviolence, set among colonists on another world (so again, more sci-fi adjacent than pure sci-fi). Again, there is a meaningful love story plonked into the center of the narrative. Here, Le Guin's interest in feminism plays an important role in the tale's development. The Beginning Place, to me, was the weakest of the narratives here, featuring a pair of folks (a man and a woman) who each find their way to a portal that allows them to spend time in another world. The man is the newer arrival and the woman resents his appearance, though he apparently is tasked with and able to accomplish a world-saving trek that the alternate worlders cannot undertake. Ultimately the story is about the developing relationship between Hugh and Irena. Some may find more in this than I did. The fourth novel here is the brilliant Searoad—a set of interlocking stories mostly telling tales of a small town in the Pacific northwest. The best element here is a novella called Hernes, which is as elaborate and densely plotted as one of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha books. Through three generations of women, Le Guin offers a layered history that connects back to the other stories in Searoad. It's meditative and incantatory and absolutely wonderful in every way. The concluding novel here is the real showstopper: Lavinia. Maybe Atwood got to the feminist mythological retelling genre first (with The Penelopiad, in 2005, though arguably Mary Renault's historical fictions got there even earlier), but Le Guin's final novel (2008), an inspired re-vision of Virgil's The Aeneid, is the stone-cold, unmissable classic of the field. The litmus test for works in this genre is not whether the stories stand on their own—how could they not? A narrative of Penelope's life is always going to contain within it its own unassailable justification, no matter how effective the writing is. No, the real test is whether or not the narratives drive one back to rethink and reread the originals, wiser and more aware. Le Guin's story of Lavinia, Aeneas's eventual wife (who gets all of about five lines in Virgil's epic), is such a story. She not only gives life and body and interest to Lavinia, she accomplishes the all-but Herculean task of making Aeneas himself compelling. Indeed, after reading this, I felt the need to look back to Virgil's epic (which, coincidentally I was teaching at the very time I was reading Lavinia) with fresh eyes. The least compelling of the epic heroes becomes fascinating in Le Guin's version, without ever overshadowing Lavinia as the central character. It is an astonishing, brilliant performance and the best thing in this book by far (and most of what is in this book is fantastic). There are a couple of fine prose pieces to conclude the volume, which testify to Le Guin's interest in Jung and feminism. If one had any doubt Le Guin deserved her place in the American pantheon, enshrined in a Library of America edition, this volume amply dissolves it. A great book.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection. I think that “The Lathe of Heaven” deserves 5 stars because of the story, characters, and pacing. “The Beginning Place” gets 5 stars because of the great characters, story, and the two narrators. I rated “The Eye of the Heron” four stars because it was great until the denouement which I felt went on too long. I didn’t rate “Seaworld” as it really was off-genre and it is not a book I would have chosen to read. I rated “Lavinia” five stars due to the characters and plot. The afterword in “Lavinia” was well worth reading as was the essay “Working on “The Lathe””. Overall this is a great collection. Thank you to Edelweiss and Library of America for the digital review copy.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this as a birthday gift; Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my favorite authors. I started in the middle with this, reading "The Beginning Place." What seems at first to be a fantasy story about a couple of young people on a quest ends in a surprising way. I loved the more modern-day ending and appreciated the sentiment - there really is more than one road to the city!

[Roxanna Usticke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read the Lathe of Heaven. It was lovely.