Lavinia

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

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
.