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A review by shimmery
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Not really appropriate to give a rating to this as it’s not really my kind of book. That said, I think I might enjoy it more if I read it a second time.
I found it difficult to get in to the world but the second half of the book, where it was more just a consecutive story involving two people and their relationship, I enjoyed. Le Guin has said herself she should have done more with the ‘thought experiment’ of a world without sex and gender, and I agree that would have been interesting. As it is, it sort of just feels like all the characters are men.
There were some beautiful philosophical passages — I liked the way it looked at how two people can be connected. And I liked the fortune tellers insights; ‘the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question’.
‘what is known? what is sure, predictable, inevitable — the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?’
‘That we shall die.’
‘Yes. There’s really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.’
I found it difficult to get in to the world but the second half of the book, where it was more just a consecutive story involving two people and their relationship, I enjoyed. Le Guin has said herself she should have done more with the ‘thought experiment’ of a world without sex and gender, and I agree that would have been interesting. As it is, it sort of just feels like all the characters are men.
There were some beautiful philosophical passages — I liked the way it looked at how two people can be connected. And I liked the fortune tellers insights; ‘the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question’.
‘what is known? what is sure, predictable, inevitable — the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?’
‘That we shall die.’
‘Yes. There’s really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.’