Four Ways To Forgiveness: Stories [Mass Market Paperback]

Ursula K. Le Guin (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Harpercollins (1996)
• ASIN: B000MILQSK
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In black and white, April 16, 2005

By 

Saskia Van Uylenburgh "Saskia" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Four Ways to Forgiveness: Stories (Paperback)

Four Ways to Forgiveness is what sf writer LeGuin calls a "story suite"--four interconnected short stories, one of which takes up nearly half the book. All four stories are set on the planet Werel and its colony of Yeowe, where a dominant black-skinned race holds a primarily white-skinned population in slavery. Werel and Yeowe have both been contacted by the Ekumen, the interplanetary federation of LeGuin's future history, but neither can join until the problems of slavery and gender imbalance have been solved. In "Betrayals", two old people find tenderness together after long and difficult lives; in "Forgiveness Day", the brash young Envoy of the Ekumen is kidnapped, together with the stiff-necked bodyguard she despises, and falls in love with him. "A Man of the People" is the story of Havzhiva, born to the pueblo culture of Hain, the parent world of all human races and cultures. Feeling out of place, he goes off to become a historian and winds up as the Envoy to Yeowe, the colony world where the slaves have successfully revolted and become free. It is mirrored by "A Woman's Liberation," the memoir of Rakam, born a slave, used sexually by her mistress as a child, used by men at another plantation in her adolescence, who escapes to Yeowe with the help of another Hainish envoy, the mysterious Esdardon Aya (whose name means Old Music) and becomes a teacher and, eventually, the lover of Havzhiva.

I love this book and have read it repeatedly. While I don't like all of LeGuin's work equally well, some of her books I have re-read many times and been deeply influenced by--the Earthsea books, The Dispossessed, this one, and A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, which I am now reading yet again. LeGuin writes science fiction based on sociology, anthropology, biology; she's not interested in shiny spaceships or the technology that runs them, and if she writes about conquering colonists, it's usually from the viewpoint of the conquered. Plus, she can do so much with her rich, spare language. If you like unconventional sf, try LeGuin.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Just Okay, August 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Four Ways to Forgiveness (Hardcover)

Readable, but that's about it -- this book lacks the energy and complexity of previous brilliant LeGuin works. It is mostly a much less rigorous reworking of the extraordinary novel "The Dispossessed", with an inadequte attempt to address the issue of Ekumen superiority vs."native" wisdom -- the question which formed the center of the astonishingly brilliant "Left Hand of Darkness." All the conflicts here drift away, not only unresolved but unfaced in the rigorous way I expect from LeGuin. Never gets to the main issues, either those between the twin planets or regarding their relations with the Ekumen. Derivative and disappointing -- read "Left Hand," or LeGuin's neglected masterpiece "Malafrena" for sustained thought, not vagaries.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Science Fiction literature, December 17, 2004

By 

Neal J. Pollock (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Four Ways to Forgiveness (Hardcover)

Fine SF explores the nature of the human condition under special circumstances--with observations of lasting import. LeGuin does that in her works. While this one, a collection of 4 interrelated novellas, is not her best work (see The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed), it is very fine work nonetheless. I like it much better than her short story collections (e.g. Orsinian Tales). This book is about the relationships between politics and people. It also speaks of the differences and similarities between the internal and the external such that changing external circumstances may not have much lasting effect if the internal circumstances (within the people) don't change. There is an interrelationship here too. There are several pithy quotes for my collection in it as well:

Love of God and country is like fire, a wonderful friend, a terrible enemy; only children play with fire. p.57

To live simply is most complicated. p. 90

The right use of knowledge is fulfillment. p.117

Loquacity is half of diplomacy ... The other half is silence. p.127

Ignorance defends itself savagely. p.197