Malafrena [Paperback]

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.

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.