The Left Hand of Darkness
Mar. 10th, 2019 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maplemoodSo, like I said in my last reading post, I've been meaning to/trying to finish this book for a long time. I got obsessed with Ursula K. Le Guin's fantasy books (mostly Earthsea, but also the Annals of the Western Shore series and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which is a short story and also maybe not technically fantasy, though it's never felt like straight science fiction to me, either) in middle school, but her science fiction never quite clicked with me then. I tried reading The Left Hand of Darkness at least once (maybe twice?), and just couldn't get through it--the pacing felt really slow to me, and I liked the main characters but didn't love them.
Reading it this time, though, the pacing isn't slow at all; I think my actual problem was that in some ways it's a much quieter book than any of the others I'd read before. Not that there isn't a lot going on--because there is--and not that the stakes aren't high--because they are--and definitely not that the story isn't high concept--because duh--but at the end of the day it isn't about any of those things so much as it is about Genly and Estraven and their relationship. And Genly and Estraven aren't always the most communicative people, even though they do try to communicate. Their friendship develops very slowly, and it takes them a long time to get a point where they understand each other even a little bit, and back in middle school I don't think I had the patience for it.
(It's funny, because the communication issues--one person thinking they understand the other when they VERY much don't, or one person wanting to understand the other but being on such a different level that they really have to struggle to do it--crop up in Earthsea, too, especially in the first three books, but since those books are much shorter the issues are resolved sooner. And they were probably my favorite parts of those books [and still are]! So even though I couldn't finish The Left Hand of Darkness in middle school, I was already prepped to absolutely love it once I could, and I did end up loving it a lot, mostly because of those issues and conflicts, though the worldbuilding is obviously fantastic and fascinating.)
Reading it this time, though, the pacing isn't slow at all; I think my actual problem was that in some ways it's a much quieter book than any of the others I'd read before. Not that there isn't a lot going on--because there is--and not that the stakes aren't high--because they are--and definitely not that the story isn't high concept--because duh--but at the end of the day it isn't about any of those things so much as it is about Genly and Estraven and their relationship. And Genly and Estraven aren't always the most communicative people, even though they do try to communicate. Their friendship develops very slowly, and it takes them a long time to get a point where they understand each other even a little bit, and back in middle school I don't think I had the patience for it.
(It's funny, because the communication issues--one person thinking they understand the other when they VERY much don't, or one person wanting to understand the other but being on such a different level that they really have to struggle to do it--crop up in Earthsea, too, especially in the first three books, but since those books are much shorter the issues are resolved sooner. And they were probably my favorite parts of those books [and still are]! So even though I couldn't finish The Left Hand of Darkness in middle school, I was already prepped to absolutely love it once I could, and I did end up loving it a lot, mostly because of those issues and conflicts, though the worldbuilding is obviously fantastic and fascinating.)
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Date: 2019-03-11 07:18 pm (UTC)"And Genly and Estraven aren't always the most communicative people"
This is a great summary of the book. Have you read Ann Leckie's Ancillary books? They're a very different kind of science fiction novel, but they also feature incredibly opaque characters, with a lot going on just below the text.
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Date: 2019-03-11 11:47 pm (UTC)No, I haven't yet. I've heard lots of good things about Ann Leckie, though. And I'm on the look out for more good sci-fi to read (since I haven't read much sci-fi at all, le Guin or otherwise), so if you have any other recommendations, I'd love to hear them! But opaque characters who run deep are some of my absolute favorites, so I'll have to see if my library has a copy of Ancillary Justice (I'm pretty sure that's the first one?)!
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Date: 2019-03-14 03:32 pm (UTC)You might also like Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, which is very much a companion novel to Left Hand of Darkness - it's about an anthropologist who visits a planet populated only by women.
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Date: 2019-03-14 06:25 pm (UTC)