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By Alidė Kohlhaas

It took very little time to decide that Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin's latest book, will find a place of honor on my groaning bookshelves. This graceful recapturing of a mythic pre-Roman past of Italy by a novelist known more for science fiction has spoken to me with unexpected intensity. It has also returned me to an old love, a language I chose to study because I wanted to know it, not because I had to.

Even if Virgil's Aeneid is unfamiliar to you, Lavinia will capture your imagination. If you know the epic poem, you may recall that she, like Helen of Troy, became the cause of war. Not that Lavinia had done anything to bring about this state of affairs; unlike Helen, she did not defy the gods, nor her father. She remained a dutiful daughter, or so we surmise from the little Virgil gave us. Perhaps, had the poet lived to finish the Aeneid—tragically he died before he completed this epic poem—we would have learned more about it. Instead, our imagination has to take over at the very moment when Aeneas is triumphant over Turnus.

Le Guin builds her story on what is the only moment in the Aeneid, that final time Lavinia appears in this hymn to battles and heroes; for an instant she is not just spoken of, but is allowed human emotions. Her ivory-colored skin blushes; she has tears in her eyes as her mother, Amata, urges Turnus on to hand-to-hand combat with the Trojan, Aeneas. When one reads Virgil, one senses Lavinia is in love, but the old Roman left in doubt if it is with Turnus or with Aeneas.

Le Guin has opted for the latter and picks up Lavinia's tale during her 19th year. Gathering salt at the mouth of the Tiber for a sacred meal, the young woman spies ships that she senses carry her future husband. Omens and prophecies had warned her father, King Latinus, not to marry off his daughter to a suitor from the surrounding Italian kingdoms. The most ardent of these wooers is Turnus, who also happens to be Amata's favorite, one suspects in more than one way. Instead, Lavinia must marry a stranger to found Italy's most noble line, the future rulers of the Rome to come.

In this well researched, detailed and evocative novel, it is Lavinia who tells us the story of her life as it draws to a close. But, this is not just Lavinia's story. In many ways, it is a story that carries us to the present, to places where women are still as voiceless as women were in ancient Greece or Rome, as voiceless as our own grandmothers were until the early 20^th century. Whether or not Le Guin intended this, her tribute to Virgil is a modern tale. Lavinia's story may be set in the eighth century BC, but it has many modern echoes. Le Guin sounds the depth of history and mythology, and thus reveals a world that is alien and familiar at the same time.

A shorter version of this review of Lavinia appeared in the Women's Post http://www.womenspost.ca/articles/books/retelling-old-tales

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