Review - Searoad

[wilderthan]

Searoad is lovely. Quiet, reflective, a little melancholic. Perhaps not the best thing to choose to read on Christmas Day/Boxing Day, but at the same time, I'm glad I read it. Ursula Le Guin always writes beautifully, always makes me feel, always makes me want to write. I'm full of shapeless, formless ideas right now, of thoughts. There were parts of Searoad that I didn't connect with very well, or that I found confusing, but it paid off to keep reading, to pay attention to it. I especially liked the story "Quoits", with the two women, the one who died and the one who survived her, and the way it said that they wouldn't use the wrong words just because there were no right ones. It's not so much the case now -- I don't feel like "marriage" is the wrong word to use of two women's relationship -- but at the same time I can understand it, how the words are or were wrong. I love that this story is just in there with everything else, a normal part of life, so that I don't even want to shelve this book as LGBT, on goodreads, because that isn't really the point, as I see it. I will anyway, because maybe someone else will see that shelf and read this review and read "Quoits" and feel... understood.

This collection is basically just about a town called Klatsand, near a shore. There are connections deep in all the stories, between characters and themes, though it's easy to miss and you find them joining up in ways you didn't expect. It's not a strong, vivid stand-out work, I think, and only "Quoits" really struck me hard -- it's more gentle, wistful, reflective. Not depressing to read, I don't think, but not the kind of thing that grips you tight and won't let go. Don't expect high drama in it, or you'll be heartily disappointed. Don't expect Ursula Le Guin's fantasy or sci-fi here, because there isn't that, either. Just "ordinary" men and women.