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A review by lory_enterenchanted
The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
2.75
"It's all we have. You see? It's the way we have the world. Without the telling, we don't have anything at all. The moment goes by like the water of the river. We'd tumble and spin and be helpless if we tried to live in the moment. We'd be like a baby. A baby can do it, but we'd drown. Our minds need to tell, need the telling. To hold. The past has passed, and there's nothing in the future to catch hold of. The future is nothing yet. How could anybody live there? So what we have is the words that tell what happened and what happens. What was and what is....We're not outside the world, yoz. You know? We are the world. We're its language. So we live and it lives. You see? If we don't say the words, what is there in our world?" 676
"Not the Logos, the Word, but words. Not one, but many, many...Nobody made the world, ruled the world, told the world to be. It was. And human beings made it be, made it be a human world, by saying it? By telling what was in it and what happened in it?"
"Lying here, a prisoner of his injuries, dependent on his enemies, he had no power at all except in silence. To give it up, to let it go, to speak, took valor. It cost him all he had left."
Some gems like these, but overall there was too much telling in this book! Perhaps intentional, but it made for a story that dragged. Not Le Guin's best.
"Not the Logos, the Word, but words. Not one, but many, many...Nobody made the world, ruled the world, told the world to be. It was. And human beings made it be, made it be a human world, by saying it? By telling what was in it and what happened in it?"
"Lying here, a prisoner of his injuries, dependent on his enemies, he had no power at all except in silence. To give it up, to let it go, to speak, took valor. It cost him all he had left."
Some gems like these, but overall there was too much telling in this book! Perhaps intentional, but it made for a story that dragged. Not Le Guin's best.