Scan barcode
A review by aggressive_nostalgia
Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
4.0
June 2019
Gifts was the first Le Guin novel I ever read, and I have spent the twelve years since periodically remembering it with fondness. It was an impulse decision to reread it now, and I’m so glad I did. I hadn’t forgotten the tangles of the plot that were so flabbergasting to me the first time, but the lack of surprise didn’t lessen my enjoyment at all. Rather, I think that enabled me to focus on the interplay between the characters and the richness of Orrec’s experience. His intense stress, lack of existential clarity, lessons about the nature of community and responsibility, and the depression of grief are all things that are more intimately familiar to me now than they were when I was fifteen, and all his observations (and Le Guin’s eloquent figurative descriptions) about them ring true. There are so many impressive human elements – the tension between Orrec’s fear/pride in his gift and security/shame in being blinded, the different mixture of love and fear and contempt he has for both his parents, his absolute faith in Gry despite their differences and disagreements – that would never shade the characterization of many a lesser YA novel. I don’t think this book strikes me with quite the same awe as, say, [b: The Tombs of Atuan|13662|The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1417900879s/13662.jpg|1322146], but it’s still a thoughtful, clever, profound story I love enough to wish I’d written it.
Gifts was the first Le Guin novel I ever read, and I have spent the twelve years since periodically remembering it with fondness. It was an impulse decision to reread it now, and I’m so glad I did. I hadn’t forgotten the tangles of the plot that were so flabbergasting to me the first time, but the lack of surprise didn’t lessen my enjoyment at all. Rather, I think that enabled me to focus on the interplay between the characters and the richness of Orrec’s experience. His intense stress, lack of existential clarity, lessons about the nature of community and responsibility, and the depression of grief are all things that are more intimately familiar to me now than they were when I was fifteen, and all his observations (and Le Guin’s eloquent figurative descriptions) about them ring true. There are so many impressive human elements – the tension between Orrec’s fear/pride in his gift and security/shame in being blinded, the different mixture of love and fear and contempt he has for both his parents, his absolute faith in Gry despite their differences and disagreements – that would never shade the characterization of many a lesser YA novel. I don’t think this book strikes me with quite the same awe as, say, [b: The Tombs of Atuan|13662|The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1417900879s/13662.jpg|1322146], but it’s still a thoughtful, clever, profound story I love enough to wish I’d written it.