Customer Reviews

Searoad

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I read SEAROAD a year ago and was immensely taken with it. Recently, in browsing through the Amazon web-site, I noticed that it had not received any reviews. That is a glaring omission, which these comments are intended to begin addressing.

It should be stated up front that SEAROAD is NOT a work of science fiction or fantasy, the genre for which Le Guin is best known. Instead, it is a collection of a dozen short stories that most definitely qualify as conventional literate fiction. All but one of the stories originally were published in magazines or journals over a four-year period. But the stories make for a very compatible collection inasmuch as they share the same setting -- a small oceanside community on the rugged Oregon coast named Klatsand -- and several share characters as well. With regard to both the physical setting and the characters, Le Guin demonstrates that, in addition to science fiction and fantasy, she is quite skilled at writing literate, sensitive, and captivating fiction of a realistic nature. In particular, she has an uncanny ability to get inside and inhabit the minds and souls of her characters.

If you appreciate excellent literate short stories, please don't pass over SEAROAD simply because it is by Ursula Le Guin and you are not a fan of science fiction; you will have deprived yourself of something special. On the other hand, if you are a fan of Le Guin's works of fantasy, you still might give SEAROAD a try; it's very good stuff.

This is my first foray into Le Guin's work.
I should mention that I read fantasy, but am very picky about my tastes in the genre and I generally don't read scifi (I plan to read her scifi work soon!). However, I've read a lot of literary novels and short stories while studying for a creative writing degree (Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, etc.) and I'm comfortable in that genre.

Searoad is definitely in the literary novels/short story collections genre. The stories are all tied together by the setting, in particular, a small seaside town in Oregon. As is often the case with the literary genre, these stories tend to be more character studies than plot-driven novels. From what I've read about Le Guin's scifi work, these characteristics also accompany her other works, differentiating them from other books in the scifi genre.

Remember, these are character-driven, not plot-driven. So if you're used to reading crime, thriller, horror novels, you should prepare yourself for a different type of reading altogether.

That said, I highly recommend Searoad. In it, you'll find compelling, charismatic, interesting characters across different periods of time dealing with all of the things most of us deal with every day.

As an avid fan of Ursula K. Leguin and of female-authored fantasy literature in general, I expected great things from "Searoad" and was not disappointed. I was surprised though, that there isn't a hint of fantasy in this book. In fact, it's quite the opposite - painfully real. Leguin captures the nuances of sadness, joy, disappointment with gut-wrenching accuracy. Right after I read it, I bought two more copies for friends. Enjoy! sp