darkenergy 's review for:

The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin

4.0

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Interesting, but I thought the pacing was off. For all the slowness and richness of detail in the beginning, the denouement (if I can call it that) is so rapid, and we barely touch on the complexities that the viewpoint character has been avoiding all along before the ending. (Incidentally, the main character's name also refers to the practice of women throwing themselves on their husband's funeral pyre, which iirc peaked in the 1800s). It's odd, the beginning was relatively subtle and made a lot of inferences that force the reader to pay attention in order to assemble events, but the rest of the book was much more linear and straightforward. Needless to say I enjoyed the beginning more. Which isn't to say the rest doesn't have its merits, but the conflict spends so much time out of sight that it's not quite as exciting as the other books I've read by her, and then the ending is, if not happy, then at least neat.