The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin ***1/2

What more could you want in a novel? This book features rich descriptions and interesting characters, has a great plot arc, raises interesting philosophical questions, and engenders real emotion - it's the whole package. Impressively, this book achieves an epic scope with a moderate number of pages (less than 300). I suppose I could complain about a spot or two here or there - at one point I thought the world was getting a little small, a notion that was completely blown away in subsequent chapters - but I enjoyed this book too much to get really picky. There's grimness, excitement, beauty. Really, it's a special book.

I'm finding it difficult to write about this book without spoiling the magic, so I'll cut my review short, other than to mention that I could certainly recommend this book to a lot more people than I can some of my other favorites. It's not as abstract as Wolfe's work is, and there's more "reward" in this book than in some others. Certainly Throne of Bones, Dhalgren, and Steppenwolf aren't for everyone. They're either too esoteric (Dhalgren), gruesome (Throne...), or intangible (Steppenwolf) for most readers - suited more perfectly to my tastes, as it were. But I think this book could be enjoyed by anyone somewhat open-minded. I'll recommend it to Ellie (my wife), for example. I might at some point try to convince her to read a Wolfe short story just so she has a clue why I'm so infatuated with him, but I'll never share some of my other favorites with her - they'd just be a chore for her. And she doesn't like to put so much effort into her non-academic reading. LHOD reads easily enough that she'll have no problem with it in that regard, but it still includes a bounty of interesting ideas. It's kind of that perfect balance between high- and middle-brow literature, being perfectly readable but also beautiful and thought-provoking. And emotional. There's pull in the plot itself. All around great.

Quotes:
pg. 98: "Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they're going."

pg. 201: "How does one hate a country, or love one? ... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills, and rivers, and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset falls in autumn on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the names ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing."

pg. 209: "It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

pg. 228: "Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy."

pg. 263-4: "And I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my friend's voice arises: and how so real a love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry? Where does it go wrong?"
(Winter 2004)

Close this window