Review: Gifts

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Title: Gifts

Author: Ursula LeGuin

Genre: Fantasy

Read: 13th 0ct 2005








Comments: Well, I finished 'Gifts' in about a day flat. It was wonderful.

I love reading LeGuin because she really understands the human condition and her characters, even in short stories, are always three-dimensional, fully-realized, living, breathing people. Her imagination is overflowing and you can sense the love she's put into imagining all the details of each world she creates, its customs and folkways, religion, language, history, dress; everything is there.

But more than that, where she really shines is in showing us the beauty and pain of our relationships with each other. The small kindness that breaks the heart, the well-meaning betrayal, the yearning to understand another, the void of loneliness, and the quiet strength of the spirit. Everything that is good and true about people, she captures.

I can recommend this to everyone. It's very quiet and slow-moving and understated but it's the stuff of true poetry; beautiful, tragic, but ultimately hopeful.

I also highly recommend her short story 'A Fisherman of the Inland Sea' which I found in a collection called 'Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century' It's probably the best love story I've ever read. (If you can even call it a love story...)

Quote: “...'If power is shown, a gift must be offered. That is important. Remember it. Tell me what I said.' 'It’s important if you show power to offer a gift too.' My father nodded approval. 'The gift’s gift,' he said..."

Gifts

PS- re-edited to gel with the new format