Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin Search Amazon for other books by or about Ursula K. Le Guin. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

In the Aeneid, that great pagan Vergil, saved by Dante from the Inferno, places the focus on his eponymous hero and shows how he creates the noble Roman state with humility and respect for the gods despite all of the difficulties he, his family, and his people faced. Not only was there the disaster of Troy and the victory of the Greeks but the seemingly endless maritime voyages also ground down the spirits. Ultimately, it appeared that Carthage would prove to be a safe haven and Aeneus established a relationship with its queen, Dido, with a view to symbolizing that union. Alas, fate intervened again and the Trojan remnants were obliged to set sail again, this time bound for the Italian peninsula. There, the land seems to be welcoming, alliances are established (and enemies overcome) and a wife taken, Lavinia, before the city is finally established. In Vergil's work, Lavinia is mute; here, Ursula K Le Guin in her usual intelligent and artistic manner, gives voice to Lavinia. In doing so, therefore, she is involved both with giving voice to the nameless women of the past who have done so much to support and shape history and, also, recreating a very specific voice from a very specific culture. Her triumph is to unite both of these aspects in a single character.

In Le Guin's tale, Lavinia is quite happily installed in her home community, with a loving father and a likely future as husband to the dashing but not terribly bright Turnus. As part of her duties as a priestess, however, she comes in contact with the poet (who resembles to some extent a quasi-Hegelian spirit of history) as well as a prophecy that she will come across a different husband and a short but happy married life. Inevitably, therefore, when Aeneus leads what is by now quite a ragtag mob of Trojans in their battered ships up the river, she makes the obvious connection and the action of the plot unfolds.

Both the language and the characterization of the book are expertly done and the sense of time and place and of capturing the intellectual hinterland of the characters--which is the authentic hallmark of superior historical fiction--are handled assuredly and convincingly. The action both surprises and is logically and indeed psychologically consistent. The understanding of the pre-historical Roman citizens seems to be acute. This is, indeed, excellent stuff and highly recommended.