Title Lavinia Series --- Author Ursula K. LeGuin Cover Art Charles Brock Publisher Harcourt Inc. - 2008 First Printing 2008 Category Historical Warnings None Main Characters Lavinia, Aeneas Main Elements Mythology Website ---

In a richly imagined, beautiful new novel, an acclaimed writer gives an epic heroine her voice.

The Aeneid, Virgil'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. 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 take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Virgil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.

Lavinia is a book of passion and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.

I read both Homer and Virgil. I then read Miller (Song of Achilles, Circe) and Atwood (Penelopiad). When I saw that LeGuin had her own take on those ancient tales, I knew I had to read it. In Lavinia, LeGuin gives voice to a character, while at the core of a war, doesn't get a single line of dialog (although to be honest, I doubt they were fighting over the girl but rather what came with her, the kingdom of Latinium, after all Aenaes hadn't even seen her yet).

In Atwood's Penelopiad, Penelope tells her tale from the Underworld, having wandered the Fields of Asphodel with centuries of time to reflect. LeGuin takes another route. Lavinia is an invention of the poet Virgil, and LeGuin keeps it that way, having Lavinia have visitations from "The Poet", who tells her that she is merely a figment of his imagination, and seeing as he was able to predict her future with absolute accuracy, who is she to argue. But The Aeneid finishes abruptly, perhaps due to Virgil's death, in fact he wanted it burned rather than published. So as Lavinia lives her life, she reflects on how she is also a fictional character dreamed up by a writer several centuries in her future. At the same time, she lives on beyond the end of the story, bringing it to a conclusion it otherwise wouldn't have.

LeGuin also stripped out the gods. Lavinia lives in a world before the Greek and Roman gods came to Italy, where they worship what are more forces of nature than anthropomorphic beings. Thus she shouldn't understand how Aeneas could be the son of the evening star (Venus). I felt that touch of historical accuracy applied on top of Virgil's tale worked nicely. Though that did push the book to be more historical than fantasy, hence keeping the poem reference alive kept it magical. This book could then apeal to both fantasy and historical fiction fans. While LeGuin admits to giving some technological and cultural advances to the characters of the time, she also tones down the grand palaces Virgil describes. After all, Rome has not been built yet, Italy is populated by a bunch of warring tribes, the most advanced of which were likely the Etruscans.

Now, since Lavinia is nothing but an object for marriage, LeGuin had a lot room to invent the rest of her, from her childhood of playing in the woods with her friends, to sneaking up on the Trojan army after they arrive to see what kind of men they were. As the daughter of a king it was also her job to run the religious aspects of the household, caring for the storerooms and keeping the hearth fire alive. Women had more important roles in this society than they did in the Trojan one (at least when Latinium was invaded the women threw rocks and bricks, in Troy the women all hid and cried), but to be certain, they were still objects to be bartered. Ultimately the final choice about who Lavinia was to marry would be her father, but a vision telling him she must marry a foreigner of course led him to choose Aeneas who had just arrived at the end of his seven year vogage. LeGuin had to work a bit to make Aeneas human too, Virgil wanted him to be the ideal of the heroic founder of Rome, but Lavinia was to find he we more than just that.

While I didn't find it as enchanting as Miller's takes on Homeric myths (perhaps because Miller kept the mythology part), I enjoyed this one as well and it helped me enjoy The Aeneid more, after all I found it the least interesting of the three ancient classics. And if Virgil can take a character from Homer and run with it, why not LeGuin giving new life to a character of Virgil's. Clearly extending the epic tale that starts with the kidnapping of Helen had great historical precedent!

It had not been my intention to get so caught up in the story of Troy, but now I find myself keeping an eye out for more of them, to the detriment of the pile of books I was supposed to read this year!