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language: English
country: USA
year: 1980
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
dates read: 6.1.23-8.1.23
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Beginning Place came to my attention, as I mentioned previously, through a conference paper where someone described it as an “anti-fantasy”. I see where the presenter was coming from, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. it’s certainly a kind of metafantasy, in that it is about escape/escapism (both Hugh and Irene enter the fantasy world to escape their lives: Hugh’s traumatized and emotionally abusive mother and the meaningless life he’s trapped in; the threat of sexual violence from Irene’s abusive stepfather), but it’s intensely focused — even for the parts where Hugh and Irene are in the fantasy world — on what comes after escape: what Tolkien called “recovery”, the return to the zero world from which one (briefly) escaped and the (new?) possibilities for action that fantasy creates by allowing the reader to be, however momentarily, elsewhere.
it is intensely vibe-driven — I marked it as n/a on Storygraph because I definitely don’t think it’s plot-driven but I also think it’s misleading to say it’s character-driven. Hugh and Irene are the vehicles through which Le Guin explores the affective experience of suburban life under turn-of-the-’80s American capitalism. the violence of the nuclear family, the ways the structure of the family and the pressures of capitalism (shared rent is explicitly named as one reason Hugh still lives with his mother) create and sustain…misery. everyone is trapped: in gender, in poverty, in the physical space of the suburbs, in meaningless lives that are — slowly or quickly — destroying them.
fantasy is a way out — but only for a moment, because until the end (and in spite of themselves) Hugh and Irene aren’t completing the prison-escape-recovery movement; they’re stuck in a cycle of prison-escape-prison-escape, the passing consolation of the wood and the river and the Mountain Town, without knowing how to, or being able to, take the full (eu)catastrophic step to emerge on the other side into recovery. Hugh visits the river again and again but never steps past it; Irene goes to town and stays always at the inn but never travels further. until they have to, and only by doing so do they find the way to set their lives in motion again. also there’s a fascinating sex scene.
I’m obsessed with it.
moods: dark, inspiring, mysterious, reflective