> the apparently plain style that
> > echoes folktales & tells more than it says...
Was drawn back to this. Yes, it's something le Guin handles very well. She
is a careful stylist, and has varied styles for different purposes. A lot of
fantasy fiction is stylised in a way that irritates me, because it's more
about setting a tone through a repertoire of mannerisms than it is about
economy of expression (not necessarily terseness full stop, but the letting
out and reeling in of expressiveness, as in a tug-of-war with the listener
pulling on the other end). Without a sensitivity to that economy in Tehanu,
you could fairly easily get the impression that very little was actually
"going on" in the book. Whereas not the least of the things it does is
renegotiate the reader's entire contract with the world of the preceding
trilogy.
A less well-known novella of le Guin's is A Very Long Way from Anywhere
Else, which deals with all that Holden Caulfield crap. No, really.
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