欧宝娱乐

I'm a huge fan of Ursula K. LeGuin, but this is not her best book. She is a giant in the fantasy-sci-fi field, with books like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Earthsea Trilogy, but Lavinia is only the second half of a great story. It's a brilliant concept; she takes a character mentioned in passing in Virgil's Aeneid, the wife of Aeneas, and creates a story around her. But she should have jumped in with both feet and defined a whole world, as only she can do. Instead, the story keeps nervously returning to Virgil, and Lavinia is somehow aware she's only a character in a book some of the time and a full character in her own right at other times. The whole thing has a cursory feel, like the treatment for a novel in places. In fact, had she focused on the 3 years that Lavinia and Aeneas were together, and made that the whole novel, she could have created near-unbearable tension as we build up to Aeneas' death. Instead, we get a summary of her life, a nod to Aeneas, and an even quicker summary of her life after. Wonderful idea, not quite a book.