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Title details for Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin - Wait list

Lavinia

by Ursula K. Le Guin
Alyssa Bresnahan
Audiobook
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Wait time: About 2 weeks
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Wait time: About 2 weeks
"A transporting novel told in the voice of a girl Virgil left in the margins. It is an absorbing, reverent, magnificent story" from the iconic, award-winning Ursula K. Le Guin (Cleveland Plain Dealer).
In The Aeneid, Vergil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.
Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long.
When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 28, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781456106621
      • File size: 336037 KB
      • Duration: 11:40:04

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 960
    • Text Difficulty: 5-6

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Drawing upon a mere few lines from the AENEID, Le Guin crafts an intricate tale around the character of Lavinia, second wife of Aeneas. Exploring her life on Latinum before Aeneas's arrival, Le Guin's story shifts focus and significance from the epic hero to Lavinia, illustrating how the politics of her kingdom led her into Aeneas's world. While Le Guin's writing does a good job of creating a believable character, Alyssa Bresnahan's performance gives her life. Bresnahan makes listeners believe they're listening to a queen who BELONGS in an epic. Bresnahan captures the young Lavinia, utilizing the narrative context to give the character tones that range from reserved and regal to endearing and buoyant. L.E. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from December 24, 2007
      In the Aeneid
      , the only notable lines Virgil devotes to Aeneas’ second wife, Lavinia, concern an omen: the day before Aeneus lands in Latinum, Lavinia’s hair is veiled by a ghost fire, presaging war. Le Guin’s masterful novel gives a voice to Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus and Queen Amata, who rule Latinum in the era before the founding of Rome. Amata lost her sons to a childhood sickness and has since become slightly mad. She is fixated on marrying Lavinia to Amata’s nephew, Turnus, the king of neighboring Rutuli. It’s a good match, and Turnus is handsome, but Lavinia is reluctant. Following the words of an oracle, King Latinus announces that Lavinia will marry Aeneas, a newly landed stranger from Troy; the news provokes Amata, the farmers of Latinum, and Turnus, who starts a civil war. Le Guin is famous for creating alternative worlds (as in Left Hand of Darkness
      ), and she approaches Lavinia’s world, from which Western civilization took its course, as unique and strange as any fantasy. It’s a novel that deserves to be ranked with Robert Graves’s I, Claudius
      .

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:960
  • Text Difficulty:5-6

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