Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand

"She says everything there is to say in three words," said Ben when he gave me the book. Well, not so much gave as left in trust. I found the three words, though I suspect they're different to Ben's.

This is a collection of stories of women. Real women. The kind of women who win the Pulitzer prize for poetry, and the kind of women who are raped and abused and thrown down the stairs by husbands, the kind of women who become mayors and postmistresses, who hold a small town together.

As with all of LeGuin's writing, there is so much depth here that I'm going to have to read it again to see what I missed on first reading.

Bechdel: pass, comfortably; hardly a surprise.

I re-read this when I heard Le Guin had died. It's one of my favourites of hers. I came to her through Earthsea originally, and it's been a while since I read this. I'd forgotten how well she writes the ordinary. This is a lovely little anthology, with just a hint of the other about it, full of characters so well drawn they could walk right off the page. Masterful. The story Quoits was particularly poignant under the circumstances.

Le Guin's writing is magnificent, and the characters here are as carefully drawn as any you'll find. That said, while I enjoyed her writing and the various snippets of life here, the work didn't suck me in as Le Guin's work usually does. I read as much mainstream literary fiction as I do fantasy and science fiction, though I found Le Guin through her fantasies, but this just felt a bit more languid and disjointed than I would have preferred. Some of the usual magic was there, but then again, some wasn't.

All in all, Le Guin readers will enjoy her normal grace of language and character, but this isn't one I'll remember as one of my favorite works of hers. In fact, beautiful as the language was, this collection probably falls somewhat at a show more lower level than either the poetry or the fiction I've read from her in the past. A relaxing read with utterly gorgeous language and detailed believable characters...but not one that will stick with me, though the first few stories in the book may well remain with me for a while and bear coming back to. show less

Finely drawn character studies of sad women in small towns. not the usual thing from Le Guin, but well done.

Heillandi, melankólísk og skrif Le Guin eru alltaf með dýpri merkingu. Searoad eru safn smásagna sem gerist á sama svæði, stundum með sömu persónum, ýmist sem aðalpersóna sögu eða í bakgrunni, en gerast ekki á sama tíma. Fjallar mikið um drauma fólksins og hvernig það tekst á við eigið líf. Heildstætt sagnasafn sem er vel þess virði að lesa.

Not entirely sure if it should be a three- or four-star rating, I plumped for the lower because, though I did like parts of it a lot, in the end it's purposefully disjointed. There are two sections; the first part is stories or snippets about people in modern-day seaside small town Klatsand, and the second being out-of-time snippets about one particular group of mothers and daughters, comprising four generations in total.

It's very engrossing in parts, and then other parts left me cold. The swathes of quasi-poetry didn't do much for me, but the details of life and love and thoughts were what I stayed for. All in all, not a usual UKLG book. Interesting to read but not going to top my list of her works.

I don't think I can review a LeGuin book in a way that's useful for other people. Everything she does - even this quietest of her books - wrecks me.