Customer Reviews

Malafrena

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It's too bad that most booksellers automatically, and mistakenly, placed this lovely "mainstream" historical novel in the science fiction section with the rest of Le Guin's work. It deserved a wider audience than it probably received.

However...I wonder how many other Le Guin fans have noticed that MALAFRENA (written five years later) is essentially the same novel as THE DISPOSSESSED, its setting moved from a distant planet in the distant future, to an imaginary (but oh so real) country in early-19th-century Eastern Europe? In both cases the story is of an idealistic young man who leaves his home because he burns for action and his secure but flawed home seems unbearable to him; goes to the decadent home planet/decadent big city that he believes is where he truly belongs, in order to chase his dreams and shake things up; finds himself in over his head in events he can't control; and eventually returns home chastened, more mature, and (rather like Dorothy) willing to admit that his heart's desire had never really been farther than his own back yard.

But it's an absorbing tale, written with Le Guin's usual beautiful prose and perceptive characterization; and a fine portrayal of post-Napoleonic Europe and the revolutionary stirrings of the 1820s and 1830s--a good history lesson even though the country of Orsinia never existed except in our imaginations.

Malafrena, by Ursula K. Le Guin, is about freedom, and discovering freedom, whatever shape it may take. Itale Sorde, raised in mountainous Malafrena in the imaginary land of Orsinia, becomes absorbed in the legacy and promise of the French Revolution. Abandoning his ancestral home, he sets off for the capital city and becomes involved in the increasingly radical politics of the day. His efforts culminate in insurrection; Orsinia, like the rest of Europe in the early 1830s, is brewing with revolution. As the citizens barricade streets of Krasnoy in the name of freedom, Itale faces a crisis of conscience, beginning to question the very definition of the liberty he is fighting for. Malafrena is irritatingly out of print at present; this is unfortunate, as the novel provides a lot of background on Le Guin's Orsinia. For Le Guin fans, it is a must read as a sort of compass, a means of feeling out the lay of the land. Also interesting is the debt Le Guin pays herein to both European history and Victor Hugo; the Orsinian emeute is sparked by, and reflects those immortalized in Hugo's Les Miserables. Of course, Malafrena is a good read in its own right: the story, sprawling through several years and as many peoples' lives, is curiously focused; the events, beautifully rendered in Le Guin's luminous prose, never fail to circle back in towards the simple questions that lie at the novel's center. Sometimes, as Itale discovers, one finds true freedom in returing home.

When this book was first published there was considerable hoopla to the effect that Le Guin had ceased to be "just" a "genre" writer of science fiction and fantasy but was now a "mainstream" writer appealing to a broader audience. I don't get it! Where is the line drawn between a so-called "historical novel" about an imaginary country (Malafrena)and a "fantasy" novel (like "The Dispossessed") about imaginary planets? Is the distinction so significant that solely on this basis it creates an appeal to a broader, mainstream audience? As a previous reviewer here pointed out, those two novels are very similar in their plotting and echo Le Guin's themes and story lines: the nature and meanings of freedom or other idealistic obsessions; depth of anthropological detail; cultural shock or clashes; coming of age; the changes, understandings and growth that come through noble efforts, love or loss; and the compromises the characters make as a result of their various vicissitudes. Her conclusions are always bittersweet: the characters make peace with their lot and find strength to continue and an indication of some kind of future.

LeGuin's prose is beautifully crafted, evocative, fraught with meanings, dense, wide-angled, many sided. Her works need to be read and reread to grasp some of what they hold. Le Guin is our George Eliot, and Malafrena is another Middlemarch. It would be more meaningful, however, if it were based on the actual history of an actual country. Her fascinating details, plotting and descriptions would gain significance as interpretations of, and insights on, real events.

Since the work was imaginary, I wish her female characters had been made stronger; that they had prevailed more. I understand she intended for them to echo in some part the feminist spirit of the sixties, but nevetheless they were trapped by their society, helpless and subordinate to the men who controlled them. Luisa was neurotic, hateful and unhappy; Laura lived an empty, dominated life, and Piera had to choose between marrying the widower she loved or the "freedom" of taking charge of the management of her family estate. At the conclusion Itale thought her plain; past her prime, a dried up sterile stick, and she told him they could be friends only if they understood they would never marry. Perhaps the reader is meant to read a good deal into the ending, about their unstated future happiness and Itale's return to pursue his old dream, but for me it had to be more clearly spelled out.

Ursula le Guin is my favorite writer, so I don't pretend to be unbiased. She uses words beautifully, but that isn't what I like best about her writing. I like the way she uses fiction to explore society and how it is shaped by geography, climate, science, technology - so many things. This is the best book I have ever read about revolution. Using an imaginary country on an imaginary world (picture Italy in the 1600's), she follows an idealistic young man from the time he leaves his father's home and goes to University. There he becomes part of the movement for social change. He grows up as the revolution unfolds. It is the timeless story of idealistic youth and the struggle to find a form of governance that works, and is just and compassionate.

Leguin's Orsinian tales include the story collection with that title, additional stories from the Compass Rose and Wind's Twelve Quarters collections, and this full-length novel. According to the interview in McCaffrey's Across the Wounded Galaxies, this imaginary-country mode preceded both her Hainish-cycle science fiction and Earthsea fantasies, Malafrena having been begun before she wrote her first sci-fi novellas, but finished only after she had won the national and international sci-fi awards for her first full-length novel in the Hainish mode. She says in the interview (b) that she turned to science fiction when she was told that her imaginary country was unmarketable, and (a) that it took the arrival of the women's movement circa 1970 for her to see her way to completing this book by doing justice to its several major female characters. Since I read that, it's seemed to me that the climactic scene is Piera's lakeside reverie at Christmas; and that the final resolution between her and Itale is just the most brilliant thing: you can't know what will happen, but you can know that it'll be that good whatever.

I've learned more and better European history from Leguin's Orsinian tales, especially Malafrena, than from Gibson and Sterling's Difference Engine--not really a fair comparison, but still. My advice, if you're any kind of Leguin fan, don't let any preconceptions at all get in your way, where Malafrena or its lesser corollaries are concerned. I keep thinking she'll write another novel that will do for Orsinia what Tehanu did for Earthsea, but I'm still waiting--and still fervently hoping that I won't be permanently disappointed.

Somewhere between Italy and Croatia, Ursula Le Guin has pried open a
gap just large enough to insert the fictional nation of Orsinia. Le
Guin is a master of fantasy and science fiction, but "Malafrena", her
longest work set in Orsinia, is neither. It's a straightforward
historical novel-- and a very good one, too.

Fundamentally, the story is a tragedy-- the tragedy of
Austrian-dominated Orsinia, of the revolutionary impulse in general,
and of its protagonist Itale Sorde, a young country gentleman from the
mountainous Val Malafrena. Captivated by his grandfather's library of
speeches from the French Revolution, he falls headlong in love with
the ideal of freedom. In the 1820s, it was still possible for a
reasonable person to feel that exhilarating optimism. Le Guin never
allows us that luxury; we see the ominous approach of 1848, and beyond
that, hints of two world wars and the Iron Curtain.

Itale starts off with poetry and schoolboy pranks, but he pays a high
price for his dreams. Printing a nationalist magazine under heavy
censorship, he lives in poverty, unsure if his work will ever make a
difference. His social status is an obstacle-- too posh for his
working class surroundings, but certainly not a fit match for clever,
charming Baroness Paludeskar. Some of his companions will be
jailed; others will die at the barricades of 1848.

The real cost, however, is his growing distance from the idyllic
simplicity of Val Malafrena, which we see mostly through the eyes of
Piera, heiress to the neighboring farm. She's not as successful a
character as Itale, spending too much of her time dithering about who
to marry and whether she can bear to leave the mountains as he did--
it's meant to be a process of self-discovery, but often comes across
as self-absorption. But the countryside itself is wonderfully written:

Shadows now touched the lake from the western peaks and there was
a softer color low in the sky, a vague blue-violet, but still no wind
rose, and [lake] Malafrena lay like a bowl of heat and light.

If you've been there, you'll recognize it-- a dreamy, lingering
summer evening in Montenegro or Tuscany.

Le Guin is usually a liberal, but this is a very conservative novel, a
story about homesickness and the loss of innocence. By the time you
put down the book, you'll miss Malafrena nearly as much as Itale. (M.E.)

Pick up a Leguin novel and what do you expect? SciFi, right? That's what I thought several years ago (Ok, twenty or so!) when I walked into my local bookstore (pre-Amazon.com) and walked out with another Leguin novel I found in the Sci-Fi section.

Much to my dismay(I had just finished the Earthsea trilogy) it was a historical novel, not Sci-Fi. Hence, my disappointment. I forced myself to finish it and when I did, I threw the book away and warned all my friends off it. Don't know who the schmo was that put this book in the Sci-Fi section, but I felt like I should have billed him, her, it, or them for the time I spent trudging through it.

Ursula K Leguin is one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. Anyone could have written this book, but it is evident that nobody wants to read it.