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Lavinia | 
| Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Publisher: Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $14.96
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 485
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0151014248
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780151014248
ASIN: 0151014248
Publication Date: April 21, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
in The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word in the poem. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills. Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to make her own destiny, and she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life. Lavinia is a book of love and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Elegant, spare, rich May 8, 2008
I loved this book for its wisdom and its tenderness and for the spare, elegant richness of its language. Stories have been pouring out of Le Guin these last few years, as if the ripeness of her words must be shared. We are so grateful.
 great! May 5, 2008
I loved this book. Ordered it overnight so I could have it to read the evening my husband went out of town. I didn't get to sleep until late that night because I stayed up to finish this wonderful book! It did just what I wanted and took me away!
 Not up to LeGuin's usual standards May 1, 2008
LeGuin had a great idea -- take the little written about Lavinia, the last wife of the Trojan hero Aeneas, in Vergil's epic poem The Aeneid and flesh it out into a story of pre-Rome Italy. With LeGuin's writing and Vergil as source material what wouldn't be great? Unfortunately, LeGuin seems constrained by the mythological elements in the story and the writing is ponderous and slow, in keeping with epic poetry perhaps, but not what you expect from LeGuin. As others have noted, the writing is beautiful but the story is slow. Even after removing the action of the gods from Vergil, everything is a bit too perfect. LeGuin takes the liberty of having Lavinia know that she has been created by Vergil, but it still would have been nice to be able to see Lavinia as a flesh and blood human being of pre-Roman Latium. The principal characters just don't come alive. Only the slaves and farmers, secondary characters here, seem real. Everyone else is the perfect hero or flawed anti-hero of myth, try as LeGuin does to make them seem real.
On the plus side LeGuin is great writer so you never feel like this is a complete waste of time, and you get to know the story of the Aeneid somewhat, of how after the fall of Troy Aeneas wandered through Africa and Sicily looking for a home for his people, and ended up in Italy, married to a princess of Latium. I didn't learn quite as much about the time and place as I'd have liked, but even though I was a bit disappointed, I'm still glad I read this.
more than a historical novel April 30, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have enjoyed LeGuin since I was 14 and read "Wizard of Earthsea". She has always been able to write the most splendidly imaginative science fiction ("Left Hand of Darkness") or fantasy- that always ends up being about the mysteries of the human heart instead of the time and place that she has invented.
She has never lost this ability, and it shines in "Lavinia". But I think I have enjoyed this one in a special way, because of the literary added value she gets from the ghost of dying Virgil, and Lavinia being both a real person and a literary construct in the story. This is very memorable and rewarding stuff, haunting really. Bottom line, LeGuin is not just someone who can craft sf, fantasy, or historical fiction with equal flair. She brings poetry to prose with her wonderful judgment of the perfect scene, the perfect word. I cannot imagine doing this at age 78, and reading the Aeneid in Latin just to do a better job. She is unbelievable. I kneel before her.
Virgil: The Le Guin Remix April 25, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Two things I appreciated about Lavinia beyond the exceptional skill with words and characterization that I have come to expect from Ursula Le Guin:
1. I enjoyed her keen perspective on the Aeneid. I read the epics of Homer and Virgil back in college and so the conversations in this novel between Virgil and Lavinia made me laugh uproariously yet at the same time had a lot of depth. Lavinia has a perspective on the events in these stories that is all her own.
2. This book brought early Roman culture and religion to life for me. Before reading this novel, I hadn't considered looking into early Roman culture, but now I might just check up on some of the histories Le Guin mentions in her acknowledgements.
To appreciate this novel more, I would have liked to reread the Aeneid first, but it was worth the read anyway and I think it'd be fun even if I hadn't read Virgil.
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