Lavinia

Written by Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan

Highly acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin lends a resonant voice to a pivotal yet often overlooked character of Vergil's The aeneid. Born into peace and freedom, Lavinia is stunned to learn that she will be the cause of a great war-or so the prophecies and omens claim. Her fate is sealed, however, when she meets a man from Troy. "... masterful ..."-Publishers Weekly, starred review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 26, 2008
• ISBN: 9781436183642

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes twenty-three novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, thirteen children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

Reviews for Lavinia

[Sonalee Majumdar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Does it “drag”? Or do sone people struggle to care about the lives of women?

Does “the craft” not meet some vague standard of perfection? Or do some people struggle to appreciate the evolution of an author’s voice, cuz they want to read more of the same from the sad box they’ve tried to stuff a complex and immensely creative and thoughtful human being in to?

I also think only stuff I read as a young person is any good.

[Consecution · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The craft, while not impeccable, is by no means lacking. However, unlike her two most celebrated novels, Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, inspiration and originality are insufficient to render this work among the memorable ones of the first 25 years of this century. My favorite line, which, with knowledge of Shakespeare anachronistic to the archaic Roman storyworld is all the funnier, was when Le Guin's Virgil exclaims with exasperation: "How could one end a story with a marriage?!" Also, when Lavinia's mother is described as engaging in "Women's Rites," one must indeed confer praise. However, the story drags and drags... not at all on the imaginative level of LeGuin's 1960s and 70s work. The reader was superb... one only wishes she'd been given a more noteworthy text to showcase her abilities.

[Grayson Sussman Squires · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Guided by Vergil, how could Le Guin go astray? Indeed, she follows the course of this story as if she was Aeneas sailing up the Tiber. Imaginative, detailed, thrilling, this augmentation of the timeless myth of the forefathers and mothers of Rome feels like continuation where the ancient Poet left off. And more importantly, by shedding light onto the spiritual practices and cultural roles of women in ancient Italy, this story ultimately feels closer to a rich social history than it does a novel by one of fiction’s mightiest heroines.

[dokfintong · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book perhaps only UKLG could have written from her knowledge of Latin and Greek. Lavinia is mentioned in Vergil as Aeneas's wife who gave her name to their town. This is an imagining of Lavinia's life from her early years till her son is king. Slow start but very worth finishing.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this book Ursula K. Le Guin riffs on a minor character from Virgil’s Aeneid, that of Lavinia, daughter of Latinus and eventual wife of Aeneas. Aeneas, of course, was the Trojan prince not killed when Troy fell, escaping and traveling to Italy, after a journey ala Odysseus took him to places like Carthage where he’d meet Queen Dido. His descendants, so the Virgil legend goes, would found Rome. It’s the second half of the Aeneid that Le Guin essentially retells in prose through Lavinia, the point at which Aeneas arrives.Little was mentioned of Lavinia in the source text, but Le Guin crafts quite a narrative around her, and to her credit, it’s completely harmonious with Virgil’s work. In weaker hands it might have become some kind of manifesto, but Le Guin uses Lavinia to fill out the story from a woman’s perspective. The result is a broader picture of life in the 8th century BC in the area around what would become Rome, even if Le Guin (as Virgil did) makes it a teeny less primitive than it may have been, as she discusses in the Afterword. The elements of intrigue and inevitable warfare are of course present, but the perspective shift brings them more to life, and adds a layer of humanism. Le Guin uses an interesting technique of having the narrator, Lavinia, communicating with poet Virgil who would live centuries later, and aware of this fact, much as the people of the day would consult oracles and abide by them. It’s a scholarly work, and one that was clearly well-researched. It would make a fantastic companion read with the Aeneid, and even reading it many years after the Aeneid in my case, brought it back to life for me. It’s the stuff of legend, but communicates universal truths about humanity, both in virtues and failings.

[kittycunningh-815148 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Written in the vein of C. S. Lewis' 'Till We Have Faces; this is the story of Aeneas told by one of the least discussed of Virgil's characters. It's a decent story, but not the most interesting of LeGuin's books. There isn't much growth in any of the characters. The good guys remain stalwart and the bad guys never change. One character wobbles a little, but not much.

[octoberdad · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting book. As usual, Le Guin's prose is nearly flawless, and her ability to convey complex ideas simply is unparalleled.

If there's anything to criticize about this book, it's that Le Guin doesn't take her ideas far enough. The most interesting part, the part where she could have delved further I think, is the meta nature of Lavinia's conversations with "the poet" and the implications on free will, destiny, etc. She does of course touch these topics, but they are explored only tangentially. And of course she could have gone even further — but possibly not without devolving to a frivolous fictional solipsism a la King's Dark Tower VII.

But that I feel she could have done more does not make the story she told unworthy in any way. It is an interesting tale about a marginal character in the popular (though as Le Guin explains in her Afterword, much less known than it should be) story of the Aeneid. It is, in a way, the contrapositive of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead — and if that means nothing to you, all I can say is that I wish I had Le Guin's trick of stating things more clearly.

I doubt this well ever be my favorite Le Guin story, but it was well worth the time spent reading it, nonetheless.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have vivid memories of sight reading Vergil's Aeneid for Latin class and translating chunks of it for homework. That sort of thing fixes the story in one's mind. I don't remember much about Lavinia, other than that she was the woman Aeneas married after landing in Italy. Le Guin brings her to life in this novel as narrator and central actor. This book, like all of Le Guin's writing, delights me, and I hope it introduces some readers to the classics. I think Le Guin would have delighted to see the recent translations of classic epics by women, and also the novels based on characters like Circe and the Trojan women.

[thetruebookaddict · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing! Le Guin writes so beautifully.

[zeljanamaricferli · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It is always a pleasure to read Ursula Le Guin. She has a rare talent for creating characters and worlds that somehow effortlessly come alive. Lavinia is no exception. The concept of the book is interesting (though hardly new), an quite engaging. However, I really struggled in the beginning, and it took me a long time to actually warm up to the book and start reading. In the last third or so, the story feels really hastened. Altogether, I didn't feel that the plot was balanced, and many parts felt like they were there just because, with no real purpose and not adding anything to the book. I feel that the potential of this novel has not been fully realized.
Some parts really shone, though. The descriptions of rites, lares and penates were wonderful. Lavinia's inner world felt was depicted in a very touching way, and the character was probably the one I cared for the most of all the books I've recently read. I also liked the way the general concept of fate and duty was dealt with.

[birthsister · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had hoped for a feminist retelling in the same vein as Mists of Avalon and Firebrand. While I'm sure that's the spirit that was intended, this book felt flat and uninspiring. While Le Guin's gift with prose made it readable, her attention to irrelevant details made it tedious. If you want a book about pre-Roman religious rites and a laundry list of casualties of war, I would highly recommend the book. Otherwise, you'll be mostly disappointed.

[brangwinn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Le Guin shows her storytelling mastery as she creates a beautiful story about a minor character in Virgil's AENEID. Lavinia tells her own story about her life as a female and how she became Aeneas’ wife. Of course, it’s a good book, its by Ursula Le Guin.

[cindywho-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the kind of book that makes you wish you'd had a classical education. LeGuin takes a minor character from the Aeneid and fleshes her out with the story she should have had. I wasn't actually in the mood for a war story, but the details of the life of this ancestor of Rome are fascinating. What really made this story stand out was Lavinia's relationship to Vergil who contacts her in sacred space, blurring the lines between legend/fiction/reality.

[xiaomarlo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While I do love UKLG, this one just didn't do it for me. I got bored. I think she is way, way more into pre-Roman history than I am. I know she's not a plot-heavy person, she loves setting and everyday life. It's just this particular setting I found uninteresting. I think if you're into Classical Studies, you might like this.
What I did find really interesting about the book was Lavinia's relationship with the author, and the idea of fictional characters existing on some real level. As well I liked the idea of prophecies and oracles (and dreams, Le Guin loves her dreams) -- they're a big motif in Greek and Roman literature, and the idea of knowing what is going to happen in the future, but not how, is an interesting one that weighs heavily in this book.
The last few paragraphs of the book were excellent.

[junipersun · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

LeGuin doesn't fail to impress. We enter the life and culture of pre-Roman women, with its cycle of ceremonies and the attention paid to following one's destiny. For these people, to do an act that is against this inner directive is so unthinkable that the word for it, is never used. The phrases "living in balance" or "harmony with nature" are never used in this novel but this is, essentially, in my cultural terms, what Lavinia's life was about. In that sense, this is a thought-provoking and inspiring novel. We are brought back to the original meanings of words, of "awe" or "pagan" or "piety", and even of "Mars" yet "Lares" and "Penates" are never defined...presumably because we can look them up in any dictionary.I only took the time to mark one quote, tho there were many that I might have. In this retelling of a piece of Vergil's poem, Lavinia is aware of her existence in the future being dependent on someone remembering her. "We are all contingent...I am a fleck of light on the surface of the sea, a glint of light from the evening star. I live in awe. If I never lived at all, yet I am a silent wing on the wind, a bodiless voice in the forest of Albunea" (P.68).While I had a slow adjustment to understanding the beginning format of the novel, hampered by interrupted reading, the beauty of the writing captivated me.

[iansales_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Who doesn’t love LeGuin’s fiction? It’s almost impossible not to, because it’s so wide-ranging, so clever and so beautifully written. Personally, I prefer her science fiction, and while I’ve enjoyed her high fantasies I’m not so enamoured of her literary fantasies like Orsinian Tales or Searoad. Lavinia, however, is more of an historical fantasy, and falls somewhere between the two stools of genre fantasy and literary fantasy. I have no especial interest in the period it covers, pre-Roman Italy, although a good book would, you’d hope, make me interested (after reading George Mackay Brown’s Beside the Ocean of Time, for example, I spent several hours looking up brochs online, and nearly even bought a book on the topic). Nor am I trained classicist and so familiar with the sources texts uses in Lavinia – chiefly Virgil’s Aeneid. In fact, to be honest, I know very little about Bronze Age Europe – it’s not an era I’ve read much about. The title character is mentioned in passing in the Aeneid as the wife of Aeneas, a Trojan hero who survived the fall of Troy. LeGuin takes Lavinia’s brief mention and runs with it, opening with Lavinia’s childhood, then there’s arrival of Aeneas and his Trojans, their marriage, the founding of Lavinium, war… Throughout, Lavinia visits a sacred grove, where she talks to the ghost of “the poet”, who is clearly Virgil (who lived over a thousand years later – some of the references by him to “the future” do initially suggest something a little more science-fictional, but no). I know some people were very taken with the novel, but it never quite clicked with, although there was no denying its quality.

[janeajones · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lavinia is the tale of the end of The Aeneid told by a voice silent in the epic poem. Lavinia is the daughter of the king of the Latins, destined by Virgil (and the gods) to become the wife of Aeneas and the mother of the Roman empire.As daughter of the king and priestess in the sacred rites, Lavinia is gifted with visions -- a series of which are conversations with the poet Virgil as he is dying. She ascertains the immediate future and takes her destiny into her own hands, even as rivals, including her cousin Turnus, are vying to marry her and inherit the kingdom.I appreciated the mythic revisioning of this tale and enjoyed LeGuin's creation of an early Italian society. While it's not quite up to the standard of The Left Hand of Darkness, for anyone who knows The Aeneid, this is an interesting and well written adjunct.

[nittnut · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lavinia, like Helen of Troy, is a woman of epic poetry, over whom wars are fought. Given little to say in The Aeneid, she blossoms in her own story. I thought it was interesting how Le Guin creates a character who is aware that she is the creation of a poet, but lives her life to the fullest. A great read.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Le Guin gives a voice to the woman who becomes Aeneas's wife and helps to found Rome.As I should have come to expect with a writer like Le Guin, this book was not what I was expecting. I was expecting a work of straightforward historical fiction with perhaps a little fantasy, the end of the The Aeneid told from a female point of view, something of a sequel to Jo Graham's Black Ships, which I read previously this year. And I got all that, but Le Guin has added an extra metafictional layer, which makes her book so much more complex and interesting.Lavinia in this novel is not only a historical figure, but is also a fictional character, a character who knows she's a character and who even meets her author, Vergil, also a character in the book. From Vergil, she understands that she was such a minor character that she was barely more than a name, but since she did not die in The Aeneid, she is in effect immortal, and she determines to tell the story that Vergil did not. From Vergil, she also learns the fate of Aeneas--although it's deliberately unclear whether that fate was indeed historical or only fateful because the author had written it so--and armed with that foreknowledge, she is actually able to take control of her own life and shape her destiny.Lavinia in Le Guin's hands is a fascinating character, a woman who is acutely aware of the position of women--especially the unmarried daughters of kings--in her society. What I admire about her is how she manipulates her own understanding of the world and knowledge of the future to get what she wants. She is not only predestined to marry Aeneas, but she wants to marry him, and when war breaks out over the question, she skillfully uses the people's fear of the gods and oracle to bring her own destiny about. Later, after Aeneas's death, she uses the same strategy to ensure that their son remains with her and she can raise him to adulthood, in direct contradiction of the prevailing traditions. Lavinia does not struggle against the society she is born into; she is a pragmatist who works within the confines of her society in order to transcend them. Yet, the reader must remain aware that she is not a real woman at all, but a character in a poem, an immortal character who transforms herself into author to write her own story, since her author failed to do so.This was a wonderful character study as well as a multilayered reinterpretation of The Aeneid. Le Guin is always surprising and always worth reading.Read in 2015 for the SFFCat.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A retelling of the Aeneid, por more exactly, events related to the last part of the Aeneid, from te viewpoint of Lavinia, the Italian princess whose marriage to Aeneas sets off the climatic war against her former wooer Turnus at the climax of the Aeneid. In this version she describes her life both before and after that episode.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In Vergil’s Aeneid, the Trojan War hero Aeneas wanders the Mediterranean after destruction of Troy, ultimately landing upon the west coast of Italy, where he marries the daughter of a local king and founds what would later become Rome. The king’s daughter was named Lavinia and in this novel, the author creates a life for Lavinia and the people of her kingdom.This is a short work, written in very florid prose. The author paints almost a dream-like, ethereal aura around Lavinia, as she converses with the ghost of Vergil and even posits her role as a fictional being. The first half of the book is VERY slow, however the pace quickens upon the arrival of the Trojan hero.Do not purchase this novel based upon any affinity you may have with the author or her writings. I very much enjoy her science fiction offerings (her fantasy, not so much), but there is nothing in this book that would cause you to suspect that it was written by Ursula LeGuin. Can’t recommend.

[g33kgrrl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lavinia, from The Aeneid, telling her own story. I loved reading about the founding of Rome, I loved reading about fate and the rituals and the battles, and I loved reading her meetings with Virgil. I very much loved Lavinia herself. I also have never read The Aeneid (I loved Greek myths as a kid, but never got into the Roman stories), so I had no idea what in the world I was reading half the time. If you're like me, stick with it. It's worth it.

[themulhern · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting, well-written, but uninvolving excursion by Ursula LeGuin. It is remarkable how she persists in changing and trying to develop her writing as she ages; her classic, award-winning novels were written half a life-time ago.While they are interesting, Lavinia's encounters with the poet Virgil ultimately have little significance.Lavinia seems like an anthropologist and possibly psychiatrist of her own life. She describes customs and their meanings in detail. She speculates about motivations and states of mind constantly, not for any advantage it might gain her, but merely for a retrospective understanding.The ending of the novel is very much a coda, but I think the years pass so rapidly to mark the fact that she no longer effects events, but simply observes the rituals and customs and does the tasks appropriate to her position.It made me more interested in the Aeneid than I had been previously.

[schant-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was really, really hoping that her 10-year run of tedium was going to be broken with this one, but no, it was dull. Nicely written but dull. I loved her early stuff - The Disposessed, Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, but Tehanu was the last one of hers I found at all interesting, and I stopped reading her at The Birthday of the World. Tiptree shortlist 2008

[veracite · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this so much more than I expected. Le Guin is a wonderful story-teller. I did also enjoy picking those moments where her story-telling was crimped by canon, herded and fenced by sticking to the Aeneid. She seemed brusque at those points.

It's disappointing that, in the end, Ascanius' weakness is his homosexuality although I expect you could more charitably compare his fictional treatment to Amata's, whose inconsolable bereavement was her tragedy.

[gwendydd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of the Aeneid, told from the point of view of Lavinia, Aeneas' last wife. Lavinia is a minor character in the Aeneid, which gives Le Guin free rein to create her character. It is easy to sympathize with Lavinia, because she reacts to the events of the Aeneid the same way a lot of modern readers do - the warfare and bloodshed are tedious and painful to her, and she doesn't understand why men insist on so much violence. Instead, she focuses on serving her gods and fulfilling her destiny. Lavinia is also interesting because she is aware that she is a fictional character. She has visions in which she meets Virgil, and she questions her own nature as a fictional being. She also seems to have the understanding that her story is dying, since the story is read less and less these days.All in all, an interesting take on a classic.

[amaraduende · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh my goodness this is a good book. It follows a minor character from Vergil's Aenied. The characterization and setting are both so vivid... a bit of mysticism but mostly the day to day life of a very important mythological figure.

[bunwat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I probably should have given this book more stars for the quality of the writing but for some reason it didn't really hook me.

[kisigler_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lavinia was good, though maybe not quite as gripping as The Song of Achilles or The Penelopiad, but maybe just because I'm less familiar with The Aeneid. I love Ursula K. Le Guin's writing and the story was told beautifully. She made a very interesting decision to have Lavinia meet Virgil and hear parts of The Aeneid, almost as if she is receiving a prophesy, which created a great play between fiction and reality.

[simonea_533972 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A well written novel telling the story of the Aeneid from Lavinia's perspective. I don't know the Aeneid too well, but I still enjoyed the tale from the female point of view. The book has a very mythical atmosphere, but is still very readable. Lavinia is not a book that really sucks you in, but I enjoyed reading it.