"Tehanu" by Ursula K. Le Guin (BR)

[Anthony]

I’m past this moment now, but I’ve been reading on a plane, with no Wi-Fi, so haven’t been able to post as many updates as I would have liked, but I had to highlight this line, from chapter 6: (view spoiler)[“Despair speaks evenly, in a quiet voice.” (hide spoiler)]

Again and again, Le Guin takes my breath away with the ringing truth and wisdom in her prose. But this line just froze me with its clarity.

[Anthony]

I also wanted to say that it seems to me that this book was inspired in part by a question Le Guin seems to have asked herself: (view spoiler)[ “Why haven’t I written any female wizards into this world I’ve created?” I love that she has given Tenar the voice that questions the world’s assumptions, and that she shows, via Aunty Moss, how sometimes the people who are oppressed and repressed have bought into, and in some ways collaborated with, the reasoning behind their oppression. (hide spoiler)]

There’s so much more to unpack. She is in absolute top form, and it’s fantastic to feel the years of wisdom and experience and growth of the soul that she’s brought to Earthsea, a world she created decades before, and was already packed with incredible amounts of all of those gifts before.

[Anna]

Anthony, yes. This is the point in Earthsea where Ursula did a hard course correct. I still can't remember where I originally read it, but she was very disappointed in how she portrayed women in the original trilogy. It seems like she talks about that in the recent documentary. Tales from Earthsea takes it even further, the first story in the collection is all about women and magic. (Well a lot about that, it's very long, there's much more to it.)

For those who are planning on continuing, Tales is a short fiction collection. All stories take place in Earthsea, some with familiar characters, some with new ones. The first story, "The Finder", is about the history of magic and the founding of the school on Roke, and the last story, "Dragonfly", is a bridge between Tehanu and The Other Wind. So if you finish Tehanu and are in a hurry to know how this story ends, you could only read Dragonfly and continue on to Other Wind, then go back to the other stories later.

[Anthony]

Anna wrote: "Anthony, yes. This is the point in Earthsea where Ursula did a hard course correct. I still can't remember where I originally read it, but she was very disappointed in how she portrayed women in th..."

Oh I’m going to read the whole cycle, for sure. I propose buddy reads for the last two books. Do I need to do that formally in the buddy read folder?

[Anna]

It doesn't really matter where we set it up, it'll end up on the list and be posted in the BR thread.

edit: Meaning that it can happen in this thread, since the people who'd likely join are already here.

[Gabi]

Anthony wrote: "I’m past this moment now, but I’ve been reading on a plane, with no Wi-Fi, so haven’t been able to post as many updates as I would have liked, but I had to highlight this line, from chapter 6: [spo..."

Yes, absolutely. There are so many sentences where I stopped reading and just relished the phrasing for a moment. This one from Ch 7 I liked a lot (view spoiler)[ Townsend nodded. 'Might keep the foreign riffraff out.'
Tenar nodded her foreign head pleasantly.

(hide spoiler)]

I adore authors who have such a skilled way with words.

[Gabi]

@Anna: Thank you for the suggestion of the short stories -> TBR

(and BTW: I'm up to any Le Guin BR)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I just finished "Mice."

(view spoiler)[ Agree with what you said, Anthony, there's so much about the stages of oppression, and I love the quiet rage, the trapped feeling Tenar has even as she's competently mending an abused girl, having her counsel and comfort sought by the most powerful man in the world, deciding the fates of beloved mages...she has so much power, but it's always the power given to her by others, and has been her whole life. I feel her so fully, the joy in doing good work while still wondering if this work is what you would have chosen had you been asked, the way her son was asked what he would do.

It's also another side of Ged for me. I still love him, of course. But he seems so much less...impressive here, coming to a younger woman who is more trapped than he and both asking her to take on the role of his nurturer while simultaneously telling her he is disappointed she accepted the mantle of housewife. I feel that tension, too, loving someone so deeply who is a constant reminder of the choices you weren't really given. Gah!! So good! (hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Anthony and Gabi, I really do think you'd like TH White. I know I'm extremely biased, but he does the same sort of thing with words to me. I never write in books, but my worn, dog-eared, smudged book looks like I was decoding it. Sentences are underlined, things are starred, the margins have notes... I've spent hours going over one page, thinking of all the different meanings in the words.

[Anthony]

Gabi wrote: "Anthony wrote: "I’m past this moment now, but I’ve been reading on a plane, with no Wi-Fi, so haven’t been able to post as many updates as I would have liked, but I had to highlight this line, from..."
Yes, this was also perfect.

[Gabi]

Allison, your enthusiasm some weeks ago already put Once and Future King on my TBR list. :)

[Anthony]

Allison wrote: "Anthony and Gabi, I really do think you'd like TH White. I know I'm extremely biased, but he does the same sort of thing with words to me. I never write in books, but my worn, dog-eared, smudged bo..."

I shall absolutely read TOAFK, I promise. I’ll do my part to finally get it to be an official club selection, or do a BR with it, or anything at all. I think the Venn diagrams of what we respond to are more like one circle for the most part, so I totally trust you and believe you.

[Anthony]

Also @Allison, re your comments about Ged, (view spoiler)[I think Le Guin is onto something from a long-game perspective regarding him; the speech Aunty Moss has about a walnut shell is a pretty accurate way to look at how many men respond to retirement or being fired. His entire identity was so very much wrapped up in his power, as benevolently as he tended to use it, so that it makes sense to me that he has in some ways reverted to adolescence, absent his identity. I found it very sad and true. I’m hoping that he can find something to ground him and connect him to the value of who he is and has been. I have a feeling he will... (hide spoiler)]

[Anthony]

Anna wrote: "It doesn't really matter where we set it up, it'll end up on the list and be posted in the BR thread.

edit: Meaning that it can happen in this thread, since the people who'd likely join are alread..."

Great, whatever will make it happen is good with me!

[Gabi]

Chapter 12
(view spoiler)[ "If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?" (hide spoiler)]
Ha! Made me grin quite nastily.

[Gabi]

Chapter 13 just made me so angry. Now I have to hurry to finish the book, before my next appointment in an hour.

Edit: Finished.

(view spoiler)[The last chapter was a wee bit too rushed for my liking - and for the all over pace set in the book. But that doesn't change anything for the 5 stars from me.

This was a real roller coaster of emotions. I was drawn into the story deeper than in the first three books. The way Tenar was treated by the men (in part even by Ged) made me so furious. She was the strong one, the one who did what had to be done and still so unsecure about her place in life. It was heart wrenching to read and at the same time so melancholly beautiful, cause of Le Guins wonderful way with words.

Now I'm eagerly waiting for the impressions of the other read buddies who are way better with words, so that I can nod.

One thing, that I liked - and I wanted to have pointed this out with the broken Earth trilogy, but I think, I never did - is the fact, that the protagonist is somehow "my kind" (middleaged woman, mother). This is so rare in SFF books, that I deeply appreciate it, when it happens.
(hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Chapter 8 / Hawks is the first to make me cry.

(view spoiler)[ I am grieving again all the little girls responsible for their own safety or lack thereof. I absolutely adore the idea that maternal instinct conjures a fire that can be seen as magic. I'm thinking now of the stories of mothers throwing cars off their kids, or the grandmother who killed a rabid wildcat with her bare hands while making sure no sound escaped her lips so she wouldn't scare her granddaughter asleep inside. When Therru was missing, I felt it like it was one of the kids I've watched and cared for. There's something about the way Le Guin fed us that she was missing that instantly sparked that "something is more wrong than a wandering child" fear. (hide spoiler)]

[Anthony]

In the middle of chapter 10, this line just seized me: (view spoiler)[“He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it.” (hide spoiler)]

Truth just billows through this novel, and all of her work, over and over and over again.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I will likely finish tomorrow, but apparently I need to at least read 2 more chapters!

[Anthony]

This heartbreaking passage in chapter 11: (view spoiler)[“Now, then, you look beautiful!” said Tenar in her seamstress’s pride, when Therru first tried it on.
Therru turned her face away.
“You are beautiful,” Tenar said in a different tone. “Listen to me, Therru. Come here. You have scars, ugly scars, because an ugly, evil thing was done to you. People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren’t the scars. You aren’t ugly. You aren’t evil. You are Therru, and beautiful. You are Therru who can work, and walk, and run, and dance, beautifully, in a red dress.”
The child listened, the soft, unhurt side of her face as expressionless as the rigid, scar-masked side.
She looked down at Tenar’s hands, and presently touched them with her small fingers. “It is a beautiful dress,” she said in her faint, hoarse voice.” (hide spoiler)]

So. Moving.

[Anthony]

@Gabi yes that conversation in chapter 12 was so delicious. It’s abundantly clear to me how much wicked and witty fun Le Guin is having in this book poking holes in the assumptions of the patriarchy.

[Anthony]

I just finished it and here is my review...which feels somewhat inarticulate but the immensity of what she has achieved is just overwhelming...

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to articulate how and why the genius writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s work pierces my soul as I read more and more of it. There is so much hard-earned, plainspoken, painful, loving wisdom in this book. It feels like she absorbed everything that she had created in the first three Earthsea books, written decades earlier, and found a way to filter them through her own accumulated life experiences and ideas, and poured everything that she was into this new tale. It feels profoundly personal to her in a way that is just magical and utterly moving.

[Gabi]

Anthony wrote: "I just finished it and here is my review...which feels somewhat inarticulate but the immensity of what she has achieved is just overwhelming...

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to articulate ..."

Yes, this is one of the impressions, I was hoping for, so I can nod (since I'm simply not so good with words). I had the feeling that this fourth book was more ... Can I say "mature"? ... than the first three. It feels like experience of a life lived.

I didn't realise that it was written much later. Knowing that now, it perfectly fits.

[Anna]

Did/does anyone read the afterwords in each book? Depends on which edition you have, but some of mine have Ursula's thoughts written years later. She took years to write Tehanu because she had trouble finding the reason behind some of the things she knew would happen. So it is indeed life lived and children raised that shows here.

“The story got stuck,” Le Guin wrote in her afterword to Tehanu, when it finally did appear, in 1990. “I couldn’t go on. It took years of living my own ordinary life and a great deal of learning how to think about such things, mostly from other women.”

Copied from this interview.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I'm in the middle of Chapter 9

(view spoiler)[ and I just came to say that I've cried twice now in this chapter. Once for Therru and the world that wants to stop/undo the hurt, once for Tenar who knows despite her office that she is just a human and humans should be heard. Why is that so hard? Why can someone call the wind but not listen to the person in front of them? "Is power that? An emptiness?" (hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Anna, that interview is brilliant, she was brilliant. It is somehow very encouraging that a poet of her skill, a woman with her grasp of gender, still gets mad at herself at the unconscious use of qualifiers.

[Gabi]

@Anna: unfortunately my version has no afterwords. Therefore I'm happy that you posted the quote and the link.

@Allison reg. Ch9: this is so frustrating, isn't it? It is as if in this world women and men look at the same and see something different. Prepare for chapter 10.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Anthony wrote: "This heartbreaking passage in chapter 11: “[spoiler]

Cried at this one, too.

[Anna]

I can't find the afterword online, but part of it is in the sample on Amazon, search for ISBN 1442459964. Find it by searching for 'afterword' in the search box, it's page 271. It looks like it's missing the last page. I don't have my physical copies anymore (I donated them to the library), so I can't copy the missing part.

edit: Oh damn, it's also missing the second page, which is exactly the part I was referring to.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Finished.

(view spoiler)[ This book was a lot more feminine horror than I anticipated. The first three are all a bit macabre, familiarizing the reader with the dark parts of life, and imbuing them with humanity. Here, it felt the opposite. She took the bright parts, used them to highlight the dark, and demanded why we allow that darkness any room. Why is power only ever a one way street, and why do those with all of it, who can compel a woman to be their perfect version of womanhood--wordless, subservient--still feel the need to use power to hurt?

I like to think that her immaculate use of language makes it so this question, the obvious lunacy and pain (on all sides!) that such unfettered power creates can be felt by all, not just those who've felt their aura turn to fire when someone looks at the beloved feminine being in their protection. I like to think that the pain could be shared universally, or at least met with shame that it exists.

Welp. Now I'm all sad and riled. Think I'll go be a dragon. (hide spoiler)]

[Anthony]

I think you are correct, Allison, that the pain she explores can be felt by all. I also think that this book, and the series as a whole so far, continually demonstrate that it is also equally possible to forge true loving and sustaining relationships even in the face of horror and death and loss of faith, but that doing so can be the hardest-earned work of life.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Yes, I think that's true, Anthony. And she makes it clear that choosing relationships, choosing life, our loved ones, sacrifice, all of that, is in fact a choice. The whisper throughout the series is that what is hard, what hurts is often the thing that binds us together, if we don't recoil from it.

She's right, and it's said lovingly, I know it. But it still hurts.

[Ariana]

The danger of a short book: I started a day late and I'm way behind already :-)
I'm in Ch. 4 and enjoying this a lot, as expected. I am really appreciating you folks's thoughts about the writing; I usually find myself paying more attention to plot and ideas than to writing style, unless the writing is bad and makes me cringe. It's been really enjoyable to pay attention to the writing also in this one.

Ch. 4: (view spoiler)[I really love getting to rejoin Tenar much later in her life. I like her perspective on the choices she's made in her life, but that it's not from a place of "life is effectively over now that I'm a widow" and that we still get the feeling there's lots of great deeds ahead for her. (hide spoiler)]

Gabi, have you read the first books in this series with your kiddos? Mine are still too little, but I am really looking forward to sharing these with them.

[Gabi]

@Ariana: reg spoiler: yes, that's what I loved as well!

Reg. kiddos: good idea, but I certainly have to wait a bit, cause at the moment the pacing definitely would be too slow for them.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Haha welcome, Ariana! I totally agree, what a refreshing look at a beloved character.

People have been asking me if these are kids books. I never read them as a kid, and my view on what is okay for kids seems a bit skewed for one reason or another. What age would you say these are for?

[Anna]

The original book was written for "young adults", but I feel that Atuan is the only one that feels younger. I read the original trilogy very young, and to me it was just an adventure story. Hard to say if it would be something today's kiddos would like, but I'd personally recommend them to kids who read novels on their own, so not as read aloud books for very young kids. Reading at the same time and discussing would probably add to the experience.

Tehanu of course takes it clear out of the YA range, from here on it's an adult series.

I've been trying to think about it, I know I was older than 8, but it was definitely before Middle School, so 9-12-ish maybe? A lot of the brilliance went right over my head, but I still loved them.

[Ariana]

My mom gave me the first three when I was a kid, maybe around 13? I remember liking them a lot, and I also remember her being delighted that I was enjoying them.

[Gabi]

Allison wrote: "Haha welcome, Ariana! I totally agree, what a refreshing look at a beloved character.

People have been asking me if these are kids books. I never read them as a kid, and my view on what is okay fo..."

I'd say it depends on the emotional "maturity" of the reader (sorry, there are certainly better words for this). I always find it difficult to state an age, cause kids grow so individually. If I had to chose a number, I'd say 16 to be on the safe side.

[Opal]

Gabi wrote: I'd say it depends on the emotional "maturity" of the reader (sorry, there are certainly better words for this). I always find it difficult to state an age, cause kids grow so individually. If I had to chose a number, I'd say 16 to be on the safe side.

I agree. I'd say that, for this series, a younger kid can read it and take the plot and characters at face value and enjoy it. Then, if they re-read it as an adult, they can get how much deeper the characters' are/what the plot really means (like the significance of the Shadow in the first book). If they didn't already get it the first time around; generally, kids are smarter than people give them credit for, lol.

So far, however, Tehanu seems like it is meant for a more mature audience, seeing as what was done to poor Therru (I'm only at chapter 11, and I wish I can rip that man Handy apart with my own hands). It's quite horrendous for a younger reader to be exposed to, but then, I was reading adult books when I was in middle school, so it depends on the kid.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Thanks for the thoughts! ^^

[Ariana]

I haven't had much time to read this last week, so I am just now finishing this. Many of my sentiments have already been expressed, but I have to second them. What a powerful story!

(view spoiler)[I really liked how LeGuin uses Ged and Tenar's early interactions to call attention to so many of the more insidious aspects of patriarchal society. For instance, how she automatically becomes his physical and emotional caretaker. Or how, even though he helps with the housework, the mental work of figuring out what needs to be done is still on Tenar. Or how he's disappointed in her for abandoning her talent to go off and have a family. None of this comes from a place of thinking women are "less than" in any way, and we know Ged is a good person, and yet he still falls into all these bad patterns at first. It's nice to see him change some in this regard by the end.
(hide spoiler)]

Allison wrote: (view spoiler)["This book was a lot more feminine horror than I anticipated." (hide spoiler)]


(view spoiler)[YES. So many horrifying parts. Searching for a lost child. Having people break into your house while a child is there. Realizing that you have failed in some aspect of parenting and you kid is kind of a jerk.
(hide spoiler)]

This was a lot heavier than I expected, based on the first three. Wonderful, but heavy. Now to lighten things up, I have the second half of The Poppy War to finish. O___o

[Gabi]

@Ariana: I totally agree with what you wrote in the spoiler.

Ariana wrote: "...This was a lot heavier than I expected, based on the first three. Wonderful, but heavy. Now to lighten things up, I have the second half of The Poppy War to finish. O___o"

LOL! Yes, that's a walk in the park ;) .

[Anna]

Links to other books in the series:


1: A Wizard of Earthsea >> First impressions | Final thoughts
2: The Tombs of Atuan >> First impressions | Final thoughts
3: The Farthest Shore >> First impressions | Final thoughts
5: Tales from Earthsea >> Buddy read discussion
6: The Other Wind >> Buddy read discussion

[Kaa]

Who's reading Tehanu or read it recently? I'm still in the middle of Farthest Shore, but I hope to get to this soon.

[Jemppu]

Just read it recently, and found fascinatingly clear the 'evolution' Le Guin told they went through as a writer along/aside the series; the book read quite different from the ones before it.

[DivaDiane]

I’m still in the middle is Farthest Shore too, Kaa! Reading it aloud to my son, so it’s slow going.

[Kaa]

I was just about to post in the Farthest Shore discussion, Diane! You should join me over there and tell us what you and your son think of the book so far