Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Threshold (Ursula Le Guin)

I always find Ursula Le Guin heavy going, but she's usually worth it. This time not.

Unless I've missed something fundamental, this book has no interesting ideas in it, and isn't fun to read either. There's something Freudian going on with she-dragons and oppressive mothers and maybe separation from abusive fathers, but honestly I wish I hadn't bothered.

I don't like slagging off a favourite author. It feels disloyal. Read 'The Dispossessed' and 'The Lathe of Heaven' instead.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, thank goodness someone else thought this was at the least very strange and not her usual standard

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  2. There's quite a lot going on in the book.

    For what you might have missed you can read the section "literary significance and criticism" in the wikipedia entry at http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_Place (the book was originally published under the title "the beginning place").

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