Shannon Turlington

I had been trying to recommend a new read each month, and I still fell behind on my recommendations. So of course I’m upping my goal to recommending a new read each week! Starting with this one…

Does Ursula K. Le Guin write bad books? If so, I haven’t found them. While this collection of four novellas is not my favorite by her–that honor still goes to her classic, Left Hand of Darkness–I think Four Ways to Forgiveness may be her best written and most emotionally affecting book. Set on neighboring planets, Werel and Yeowe, the novellas form a study of relationships: between a man and a woman, between men and women, between enslavers and enslaved, between natives and foreigners.Le Guin has structured this book perfectly, beginning with a slow and subtle introduction to this society and gradually building to an emotional crescendo. As we read these stories–which, at their cores, are all love stories–we learn the history of a civilization that mirrors our own in uncomfortable ways.