LAVINIA. Ursula K. Le Guin. Harcourt. 279 pages. $24.
With her new novel, fantasy and science fiction virtuoso Ursula K. Le Guin vividly fills in some of the blanks in Vergil's Aeneid. She focuses this engaging novel on Aeneas' Latin wife, who is only sketchily depicted in the epic poem. In simple, stately prose that does no violence to Vergil's work, Le Guin presents the rough, unpretentious dignity of the ancient Latin pagans. She also portrays daily life in the Bronze Age, some time after the 13th century B.C., when duty and responsibility glue the community together.
No one is idle. Princess Lavinia oversees the cleaning of the royal dwelling, the storing of grains, the carding of wool, the washing. She is defined by her obligations to her family and her people, but she pushes back against those expectations.
She is obliged to marry to cement an alliance profitable to her kingdom. But the oracle commands her to wed a foreign king. Here Le Guin employs Vergil as a ghostly time traveler who speaks to Lavinia in the sacred grove. He describes Aeneas and his heroism defending Troy. With this heroic story, the poet entrances Lavinia, who returns to the grove repeatedly to converse with him. Consequently, Lavinia knows everything about her husband before he arrives.
The question -- how will she use this knowledge? -- is suspenseful, and the answer moves the plot briskly along. Indeed, there is plenty of action in Lavinia. Even her happy marriage is filled with musings cleverly ancient yet modern, most compellingly on the expectations of women. By telling this story from its heroine's clear, forthright perspective, Le Guin has taken the cipher that is Vergil's Lavinia and given her a new life.
Eve Ottenberg reviewed this book for The Washington Post.
