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Powell's Q&A, Q&A | December 13, 2009

Norberto Fuentes: IMG Powell's Q&A: Norberto Fuentes

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Describe your latest project. Norton has just published The Autobiography of Fidel Castro, a novel that took seven years of my life to complete as I... Continue »
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    The Autobiography of Fidel Castro

    Norberto Fuentes

Always Coming Home (California Fiction)

by Le Guin Ursula K.

Always Coming Home (California Fiction) Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home is a major work of the imagination from one of America's most respected writers. More than five years in creation, it is a novel unlike any other. A rich and complex interweaving of story and fable, poem, artwork and music, it totally immerses the reader in the culture of the Kesh, a peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place called the Valley on the Northern Pacific Coast.

Ursula K. Le Guin makes the inhabitants of the Valley as familiar, as immediate, as wholly human as our own friends or family. Spiraling outward from the dramatic life story of a woman called Stone Telling, Le Guin's Always Coming Home interweaves wry wit, deep insight and extraordinary compassion into a compelling unity of vision.

Review:

"An appealing book as well as a masterly one....The future world she has created here is awesomely complex." Newsweek

Review:

"The effect it has on the reader is hypnotic....Le Guin has chosen a most original way to reveal this imagined land." People

Review:

"[It may] be Le Guin's finest achievement." Newsday

Review:

"A gift to the reader, a gentle and wise book that is [Le Guin's] most personal, her most daring, probably her best yet." St. Louis Post Dispatch

Review:

"Ursula Le Guin is among the half-dozen most respected American writers who regularly set their narrative in the future to force a dialogue with the here and now....Always Coming Home is a slow, rich read, full of what one loves most in her work." New York Times Book Review
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About the Author

Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of novels, children's books, short stories, critical writings, and poetry. She is the winner of the National Book Award and the Nebula and Hugo awards for science fiction. She grew up in Berkeley and the Napa Valley and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Nick Chapman, May 20, 2009 (view all comments by Nick Chapman)
Anyone who has spent much time in Northern California will recognize the physical landscape of "Always Coming Home."

Anyone who has read other books by Le Guin, in particular the truly superb "The Dispossessed," will recognize the intellectual and emotional landscape.

"Dispossessed" and "Always Coming Home" share a powerful engagement with the notion of utopia, and with the social issues informing the radical movements of the time in which they were published. "The Dispossessed" has space ships and anarchism. "Always Coming Home" has a Native American inspired matriarchal society on a (presumably) post-apocalyptic Earth.

"Always Coming Home" is also stylistic very different from "Dispossessed." Whereas the latter was a traditional narrative, coherent, complete and closed, "Always Coming Home" is a story, or a picture, constructed from a number of different threads. The main thread is basically a coming of age story about a young woman that follows a very traditional narrative structure, but it is broken up into sections, with other pieces interspersed. These other pages are highly varied - song lyrics/poems, fables or folk tales of the society depicted in the main story, and so on.

All the pieces come together in a very rich, satisfying way. The other material fleshes out the reader's understanding of the girl's world, while the interest of the girl's journey keeps the reader fully engaged.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780520227354
Author:
Ursula K., Le Guin
Publisher:
University of California Press
Other:
Chodos-Irvine, Margaret
Illustrator:
Chodos-Irvine, Margaret
Composer:
Barton, Todd
Author:
Barton, Todd
Author:
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Location:
Berkeley
Subject:
California
Subject:
Fantastic fiction
Subject:
Fantasy - General
Subject:
Fantasy fiction
Series:
California Fiction
Series Volume:
105-1001
Publication Date:
February 2001
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
523
Dimensions:
8.16x5.54x1.30 in. 1.34 lbs.
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