Book Review: Very Far Away From Anywhere Else

[osprey_archer]

If I had read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Very Far Away From Anywhere Else as a teenager, which I believe would have blown the top off my head. It’s not magical or SFnal, but a slim contemporary novel, YA before the Twilightification of YA.

In his senior year of high school, budding scientist Owen meets his classmate Natalie, a serious musician with aspirations to become a composer, and for the first time in their lives the two of them find someone they can talk to—but really talk to, about the real things that deeply matter to them, truth and art and thinking and feeling and life. “We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn’t the answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.”

It’s like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light, not so much in the content – although A Ring of Endless Light is also about very much about art and science and the relationship between both those things and the creative urge, so perhaps to a certain extent in content too. But both books are shaped by their main characters’ struggle with ideas, are about teenagers grappling with the big questions, in a way that real teenagers often do but that books for teenagers often don’t.

I thought it chickened out a bit at the end, though. There’s a big section in the middle where Owen muses for a while about how we’re all engineered by “movies and books and advertising and all the various sexual engineers, whether they’re scientists or salesman,” to think that “Man Plus Woman Equals Sex,” then explains that he nearly ruined things by deciding he was in love with Natalie: “I hadn’t fallen in love with her, please notice that I didn’t say that; I had decided that I was in love with her.”

And this ends up almost destroying their relationship. They return to the beach where they had a wonderful day earlier, only this time Owen kisses Natalie, and Natalie rejects him. “If what we have isn’t enough, then forget it. Because it’s all we do have. And you know it! And it’s a lot! But if it’s not enough, then let it be. Forget it!”

And then they are Torn Asunder for months. Only then Owen sees an advertisement for a concert where a few of Natalie’s compositions will be performed for the first time. Of course he has to go—and they meet up afterward—and it turns out that they are, in fact, in love.

Well, okay. That sorts of pulls the rug out from under this whole critique of the sexual engineers, but sure.

But maybe the point is that all that sexual engineering forced Owen to jump immediately to the conclusion that This Must Be Love, and therefore try to bend their relationship into the shape that movies and books and advertising call Love, and in doing so almost break it? Whereas they might not have been torn asunder if he hadn’t tried to force its growth, but let it develop naturally.

Honestly, mixed feelings. Thematically, I think this ending was a mistake, because it undercuts the middle, and in particular that powerful beach scene. But also, they are so in love. Do I really want them torn asunder permanently for mere thematic reasons?

Comments

[asakiyume]

“We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn’t the answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.”

That's really beautiful--I got a lump in my throat reading it.

And yeah: it takes a whole lot to go against the message that the pinnacle of human experience is falling in love--that that's the ultimate in human connection--and to then back down and say, " Yeah, but just in case, my friends, please note that they ARE in love" seems very -_-

[osprey_archer]

Do I agree with that formulation of the meaning of life? Am I even exactly sure what it means? Maybe not, but it is thought-provoking and also very believable as the kind of thing that a pair of bright teenagers would come up with!

And yes, I think the book kind of turns on itself in having this whole large section in the middle about the sexual engineers and deciding to be in love versus actually falling in love etc., but then no wait they ARE in love. Did Le Guin chicken out? Did the publisher throw a fit? Did the power of the love story simply prove too strong to buck?

[asakiyume]

Agreed re: not **actually** sure what it means, but you're right: it is very believable as something some bright teens would come up with, and, as I say, somehow moving even if it might not make sense

[kore]

Did Le Guin chicken out? Did the publisher throw a fit? Did the power of the love story simply prove too strong to buck?

I really doubt any of those things. It's kind of similar to Shevek and Takver in The Dispossessed -- the woman is very unsure of a relationship and tests the man, who has to meet her standards, and Le Guin's self-declared big theme was "marriage" -- union, trust, fidelity, maturity, in her vision. Owen has to live up to those things, and change himself to be worthy of her. I found that pretty radical as a girl in the early eighties; certainly there were very few books offering that, and especially Natalie's devotion to her music and future career. Le Guin was still in her Jungian phase and you can see Owen deliberately turning her into his anima figure when he decides to project conventional Western romance onto their friendship. Natalie tells him a couple makes the big decisions together, and he didn't do that.

[troisoiseaux]

Ah, the age-old problem of commenting on genre conventions while still being very much of That Genre. (I tend to encounter this more in terms of detective novels in which the characters insist that This Is Real Life, Not A Detective Novel!)

Do I really want them torn asunder permanently for mere thematic reasons?

Maybe a more thematically satisfying ending would have had a longer arc of reconnecting --> friendship --> eventually, years later, starting a romantic relationship after they'd both grown into themselves as adults, but that... seems like it would be an entirely different story.

Sounds like this was a good book overall, though!

[osprey_archer]

I've definitely seen that formulation in detective novels. It works for me when it feels a bit tongue in cheek, but sometimes I have the feeling that the author is holding up their own novel as a Realistic Detective Novel, not like Those Other Detective Novels - the grimdark of detective novels, if you will - in which case I roll my eyes. If I wanted realistic crime I would just read true crime!

Yes, overall it's a good book. The ending undermines the middle but doesn't totally spoil it, if that makes sense. And I could see it being quite hard to end without having Owen and Natalie get together romantically - I suppose you could just have them reunite as friends, but you'd have to fight against generations of love stories to do it.

[kore]

Maybe a more thematically satisfying ending would have had a longer arc of reconnecting --> friendship --> eventually, years later, starting a romantic relationship after they'd both grown into themselves as adults

It seems like the book speedruns that -- they're separated at the end of the book, but Natalie hints at a temporal reunion while Owen refers back to their shared artistic fantasy. As a kid I really wasn't sure if they would reconnect or not.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, it's true that it's not a traditional romantic HEA. They've admitted/realized they're in love, but she's going to Tanglewood to follow her musical ambitions and he's going to MIT to follow his scientific ones so they're going to be separated and who knows if they'll ever reunite... but, all the same, they ARE in love, which I think still undermines the point that perhaps Man Plus Woman does not have to Equal Sex.

[kore]

They've admitted/realized they're in love, but she's going to Tanglewood to follow her musical ambitions and he's going to MIT to follow his scientific ones so they're going to be separated and who knows if they'll ever reunite

I thought it was really not certain when I was very young and read the book shortly after it first came out (I read whatever Le Guin I could get my hands on then, which wasn't really that much). They're not what society would have called romantically involved then, at the end of the book.

[osprey_archer]

I mean, they are kissing though? They've put a four-second limit on their kisses, in order not to get too romantically entangled, because they aren't interested in sex without a commitment and they aren't ready for a commitment, but they are very much sexually/romantically interested in each other. So they're not in a romantic relationship but they're also definitely not platonic friends anymore.

[troisoiseaux]

They've admitted/realized they're in love, but she's going to Tanglewood to follow her musical ambitions and he's going to MIT to follow his scientific ones so they're going to be separated and who knows if they'll ever reunite...

Oh, nice! I accidentally guessed the ending after all.

[kore]

Erk, sorry to spoil you!

[troisoiseaux]

No worries!

[kore]

(It's wonderfully written and has one of the best last lines I've ever read, in terms of thematic structure.)

[kore]

I read that book when I was a teenager, and lost count of the times I reread it up into my twenties. It's an interesting companion to The Beginning Place, a fantasy novel that also has a very independent heroine but goes for a HEA romance ending you can see coming for the entire book.

[osprey_archer]

I'm glad to have this confirmation that it DOES in fact have this effect if you first read it as a teenager! I really got that feeling from it but it's hard to really know how one's younger self would have reacted to a thing.

Is The Beginning Place by Le Guin or someone else?

[kore]

That's Le Guin's arguably most famous YA work after the Earthsea trilogy, yeah. It came out in 1980 and I read it at around the same time as this book. It's partly a tribute to and takedown of high fantasy, it also has a very angry independent heroine and George Orr-esque hero, and it's all about the sexual cliches and gendered violence Natalie and Owen escape. The chapters from the heroine's POV are amazing and it's got one of Le Guin's best openings. It's kind of very late seventies and All About Sex. It was famous at the time for being reviewed by John Updike in the New Yorker (they didn't start publishing her stories till much later), and he criticized the sex scene.

[osprey_archer]

Do not have TIME to add a Le Guin project on top of all my other reading projects---

If Updike criticized the sex scene then it must be pretty good.

[kore]

His verdict was quote Flannery O'Connors depiction in Wise Blood of a young man's first time was more convincing, close quote.

[landingtree]

I read this as a teen and it did blow the top off my head! I read this and Jo Walton’s Among Others very close together, perhaps back-to-back, and I remember thinking that these were really good books about being young adults as be opposed to just having young characters, in a way I hadn’t really met and resonated with before.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! I read Among Others in my early twenties IIRC, but it had the same effect on me, the fact that the characters are ravenously reading all these books and trying to figure out what they think about Life and deeply engaging with big questions - that they were about the experience of being a (certain kind of) young adult rather than just about young characters.

[landingtree]

I read this as a teen and it did blow the top off my head! I read this and Jo Walton’s Among Others very close together, perhaps back-to-back, and I remember thinking that these were really good books about being young adults as be opposed to just having young characters, in a way I hadn’t really met and resonated with before.

[littlerhymes]

I did think the ending was going to go somewhere different. My friend read the blurb (this was before I'd read the book) and said "it sounds like he's going to come out." That seemed unlikely but not impossible!

I don't know if the ending undercuts the middle but it did feel like the more conventional ending. Perhaps I'm just too far distant from the period when it was published, and I have different expectations of YA as a genre now.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, I was kind of getting that coming out story vibe near the middle. "Is that likely in a book from the early 1980s," I asked myself, and also "SOMETIMES a boy and a girl are friends and are simply not in love with each other despite the fact that they are both technically heterosexual, get with the program self!" And then it turned out they were in love after all so it was kind of a moot point.