Orsinian Tales

Orsinian Tales ranks among my favourites of Le Guin's short story collections. These stories, which are not fantasy or science fiction at all, are set in the imaginary European country of Orsinia in different times of the country's history, but mostly in the first part of the twentieth century. The setting is very believable, so much so that at times I was tempted to pull out a map of Europe to see if Orsinia was on it, hidden in some forgotten corner. The stories are muted, somber tales, political at times, somewhat romantic at others, but always very real, very believable. Just as in real life, there are no "happily ever after" endings in Orsinian Tales. The stories are an excellent showcase of Le Guin's skills at crafting show more interesting, multi-faceted characters, with both their flaws and strengths clearly represented. show less

Summary: A collection of eleven short stories set in the fictional eastern European country of Orsinia taking place between 1150 and 1965.

This is a lesser-known collection of Ursula K. Le Guin short stories published after her Earth-Sea books, where I first encountered Le Guin many years ago. These are set in an imaginary country, not in another world, but in Eastern Europe in the fictional country of Orsinia. The eleven stories span a period between 1150 and 1965, although not in chronological order.

The first story, The Fountains, suggests the basic theme running through these stories. An Orsinian scientist comes to Paris for a science conference, and takes the opportunity to escape and view the Fountains of Versailles, only to return show more once more to his hotel and the surveillance of the secret police. This and the other stories chronicle the efforts of people to exert their own freedom against the restrictive circumstances of their lives. A military man excels in his career only to realize he’d sacrificed what and who he’d loved forty years earlier in The Lady of Moge. A clerk with a family longs to be a musician, and despite counsel, determines to keep working on a large composition that will take him years to finish and may not provide any economic benefit. Others seek work that will help them move beyond survival, or love that seems out of reach. In The House, a divorcee comes back to her first husband to re-establish a broken relationship.

The stories pieced together trace the history of this country from a feudal power to an eastern bloc country. Many of the stories portray what seems a relatively dismal life of eking out an existence under some kind of authoritarian regime. The sense of this all was trying to find some glimpse of happiness in a life that is hard and then you die. Characters seem to seek the transcendent in a world where this doesn’t exist.

No doubt these are finely crafted tales. But the disconnected character of the stories, the jumbled chronology, and the bleak outlook of the stories failed to capture my interest. Remembering the Earth-Sea books, The Lathe of Heaven and The Left Hand of Darkness, I anticipated more. I didn’t find it here. show less

A collection of eleven short stories set in the imaginary European country of Orsinia.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Le Guin's books. I find her writing absolutely beautiful and I think she explores some very interesting ideas with her work, but I can never become emotionally involved with her stories. I find them distanced, as though she's sitting on her characters' shoulders instead of riding around inside their heads.

This approach bothers me somewhat with her novels, but it works perfectly with her short stories. These tales are snippets of life in which we learn just enough about each character to get us through. The story itself, the plot, and the overarching ideas behind everything become key. Le Guin shows us show more people in bleak, often hopeless circumstances. We're forced to consider their every action as they struggle to keep hold of themselves.

Most of the stories take place in the early 20th century, when Orsinia is on the brink of becoming a communist state. Several pieces set in the 50's and 60's, (including the very first story), show us Orsinian life under the communist regime. These pieces make this a very political work... but to be honest, I'm not sure I got as much out of it as I could have, in that sense. I was born near the very end of the Cold War. These themes simply don't resonate with me the way they would with someone who grew up with them. I still found the characters' struggles thought-provoking, but more because of how they related to human nature than for any political reason. show less

Not a bad book, but ultimately a disappointment from one of my favorite authors. It was just boring and by the end it felt a little bit like a chore to read. While it had some nice moments I couldn't help but feel that most of these would have worked better as a Hainish cycle short story, set in an alien society, they would have packed more punch. On the other hand I never really understood what was the point of making up a country. The book references real historical events already, so being set in real places, closer to real history could have also given it some weight. I suspect maybe this weightlessness was the point, the book is mostly trying to communicate impressions but a lot of these didn't feel new or interesting to me, mostly show more because they were familiar from either my own country's history or Le Guin's other writing. show less

Le Guin, as I recently opined to a friend, is a virtuoso. Her writing is simple and direct and perfect.

#readICT category 11: published the year you were born

I truly enjoyed [Orsinian Tales]. It took me a while to read, but only because I left it at my boyfriend's place and read about a story per weekend while I was around. As usual, Le Guin gives a fascinating universe and characters who feel real in every way. She also managed in this work to make supposedly fantastic stories feel absolutely relevant to this world and the issues we've enountered as a global society. I will say that I don't think I would have enjoyed this book quite so much had I tried to read it all through as a single work. Most of the stories are of a darker (or at least more somber) nature, and the characters and themes are similar across the full work. Ideally, I'd say it's a good work to read stories from as a break show more from longer works. Highly recommended. My favorite stories from the collection were "Ile Forest" and "The Lady of Moge", though I enjoyed all of them. show less

This was a loosely connected batch of short stories labeled as "fantasy" but I didn't see what was so unrealistic about it other than the setting of an imaginary place called Orsinia. It seemed to me it was somewhere in Europe though. Not a bad story of the bunch, but one story seemed to go on a while. I liked that the stories were connected a bit. Also, a big hint is the dates after each story mean when the story takes place, not when the story was written, which was helpful in a book that jumps around in time.