From Gifts:
To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It's unwise, though, to think you know how it's going to go, or how it's going to end. That's to be known only when it's over.
And even when it's over, even when it's somebody else's life, somebody who lived a hundred years ago, whose story I've heard told time and again, while I'm hearing it I hope and fear as if I didn't know how it would end; and so I live the story and it lives in me. That's as good a way as I know to outwit death.
I've been meaning to read this since it came out three years ago. Now that it has two sequels (the most recent of which was recently nominated* for a Cybil), I figured it was probably about time.
The people of the Uplands are mostly poor farmers. The environment is a harsh one, food supplies are often low, and at best, the powerful families are suspicious of each other.
And the powerful families aren't just powerful due to land or wealth -- they have gifts. Abilities. Members of one family can, just with a look and some chanting, cause others to waste away. Another can cause blindness, another can slit a throat from afar.
Orrec of Caspromant is the youngest in a long, powerful line of men. Their gift is the undoing. With a glance, a gesture and a breathed word, their power can untie a knot or unmake a life. It turns out that Orrec's gift is a very powerful one -- and he doesn't know if he wants it.
Like a lot of Le Guin's other books, Gifts drops the reader right into a different world and a different culture, with not a lot of explanation. You have to pay attention**. Though there are raiding parties and battles, this is not an action-packed adventure novel. It's about Orrec coming to terms with his power, his father and his heritage, with his best friend and with himself. It's a coming-of-age story set in another world.
And the world is (not surprisingly, as this is Le Guin we're talking about) well-drawn and complex. The people in it have their own politics and religion and customs and superstitions and prejudices. I got so involved that whenever I set the book down, I needed a few minutes to shake it off and resurface.
It won't be for everyone -- I can't see it being much of a hit with reluctant readers -- but I loved it. It's one I know I'll re-read, and I looking forward to reading the next two.
*Haven't nominated your 2007 favorites yet? Get to it!
**A lot of fantasy novels feature maps, necessary or not -- one actually would have been helpful here. There are so many clans with so many different gifts that I had a hard time keeping track of everyone at first.
I read "The Dispossessed" in 1974 and "The Left Hand of Darkness" around the same time. They are probably two of the greatest SF stories ever written. I haven't read anything by her lately because the genre itself changed over the years. In the 60's and 70's, SF challenged readers with complex narratives. Since then it became all fantasy which I have no interest in.
Posted by: Tom | 15 October 2007 at 07:01 PM
This book was on the Dorothy Canfield Fisher list in Vermont a few years ago. It was the only one I didn't like. I read the whole thing, but I really didn't like it. I can't remember why, I just remember going into the library and saying to the librarian that the only book I didn't like on the list was "that Gifts book" and she said, "Oh, I didn't like the Le Guin" and then we looked at the list and realized it was the same book.
I am glad somebody liked it.
Posted by: Lady S | 15 October 2007 at 08:27 PM
I can't wait to read the third one as well -- I feel so lucky to at last have an excuse to catch up with this series!!!
Posted by: TadMack | 16 October 2007 at 05:10 AM
I love everything by Le Guin. Her sci-fi books are wonderful in particular "The Left Hand of Darkness"
and "The Lathe of Heaven". "The Wizard of Earthsea" series is a fantasy classic. I loved "Gifts" and the sequel "Voices" is even better. The characters of Orrec and Gry appear again in this one which is a story about life in a city where the rulers hate and fear books.
Posted by: Librarywitch | 16 October 2007 at 06:06 AM
Hi Librarywitch -- I started it last night, and I almost hit the point where Memer meets Orrec and Gry, but then I fell asleep. I love the secret room.
Yeah, Lady S, I definitely can see that it's one that would divide people. Maybe because their world (at least in Gifts, though I'm seeing it in Voices, too) is so violent and harsh and bleak? Most fantasy novels make me want to live (or at least visit) the worlds described in them. Not so much with these. Yet I'm really enjoying them. Odd. Did you like the Earthsea books?
Posted by: Leila | 16 October 2007 at 06:43 AM
Gifts left me a bit cold, and I haven't been tempted to return to it, but I adored Voices. Possibly because Memer is such a compelling character, and possibly because a setting that includes a hidden room full of books is more appealing than the bleakness of the lands where Gifts takes place.
Posted by: Charlotte | 16 October 2007 at 11:08 AM