Word: guinness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...BEGINNING PLACE by Ursula K. Le Guin; Harper & Row; 183 pages...
...grass somewhere. Yet the green enticements of Eden die hard, especially among city folk who would not know a primrose from a petunia. The more man-made their environment, the more likely they are to dream of running for shade. In The Beginning Place, her 13th novel, Ursula Le Guin retells this story, one of the oldest in Western literature, in modern dress. She creates two postadolescents who are drowning in personal uncertainties and suburban sprawl and then gives them a place to hide. If this were all, her novel would stand as an uncommonly graceful fantasy-romance...
...course, Hugh is the champion that they are waiting for, but this certainty is a tribute to Le Guin's narrative savvy. Because she moves briskly without ever seeming to hurry, she makes Hugh's transformation from supermarket clerk to Arthurian knight-errant whisk by as inevitably as a theorem, as acceptably as a rabbit coming out of a hat. The author brandishes her magic instead of concealing it; when Hugh accepts his mission on behalf of the people of Mountain Town, he is given a standard-issue sword and sent out to slay a woefully worn...