Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

“Very Far Away From Anywhere Else” by Ursula K Le Guin

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I ran across this reference to a book by Ursula K Le Guin which was not science fiction or fantasy, and I was curious, so I got it out of the library. I had seen the title around over the years, and I imagined it was something like “Bridge to Terabithia” with people going to imaginary worlds, or maybe a travelogue about very remote wilderness places.

It had a little bit about an imaginary world, but no one goes there. It’s about two socially isolated high school seniors who find each other and become friends. It’s explicitly about being out of step with what’s expected. More indirectly, it’s about being neurodivergent. It’s about taking music seriously, and taking friendship seriously, and the ways relationships can be complicated and ruined by expectations, and maybe repaired again. It’s about despair and dissociation and disconnection and the double bind of loving expectations that don’t apply.

All that in 89 pages! Its location is never named, and while it has geographical elements of Portland OR (Le Guin’s home town), it seems like a smaller city than the Portland I knew.

Recommended!

Available at bookshop.org.

“Seaward” by Susan Cooper

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Recommended to me by: Noticing it on my bookshelf

I have one remaining shelf of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, winnowed down over the years from my avid teen collection. Most of them are deeply familiar, authors like Le Guin, Lindholm, MacAvoy, McKillip. I was idly looking at the beginning of the alphabet and noticed this one, which I didn’t really remember. I must have picked it up at a book sale and kept it out of fondness for Susan Cooper’s “Dark is Rising” series.

This is a portal fantasy with fairy tale themes. Two young people in great distress over the loss of their parents find themselves in a different world. Westerly and Cally soon meet up with each other and travel together. They also meet two powerful and mercurial figures that are in conflict with them and each other.

I liked the world-building, the movement of the plot, and the ambiguous villains and helpers. No simplistic good and evil here. The young people are around 16 and are referred to as children even while traveling and surviving a difficult world, competent but not falsely assumed to be adults.

They explicitly call out gender dynamics when the boy assumes he can take the lead and try to protect the girl. Of the two powerful figures, the man is more caring toward the children and the woman is more dangerous.

The children undertake a long and arduous journey to reach the sea (thus the title). In the end, the travel seems to have been for their education, which feels patronizing to me as a middle-aged reader, but makes more sense for teens. The journeying reminded me of George Macdonald’s The Golden Key, although not as heavy-handed with the moralizing.

The ending left me curious about what happened later for Cally and Westerly.

People have written fanfiction about it, such as The Unending Swell of the Sea by silveronthetree.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Surviving Domestic Violence” by Elaine Weiss

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Subtitle: Voices of Women Who Broke Free
Recommended to me by: Finding it in a Little Free Library

A compassionate and thorough look at how women get ensnared into abusive relationships with men, and how they get themselves out. Elaine Weiss includes her own story. She clarifies repeatedly that the abuse is not the victim/survivor’s fault, and there is no “type” of woman that is more vulnerable. Any woman can get into a relationship with an abusive person, and that’s what creates an abusive relationship.

The book was published in 2000, which only partially excuses its heterosexual and gendered lens. Yes, many abusive relationships are men abusing women. And some are not. This book could have also addressed queer relationships and women abusers in at least one of its examples.

The stories are also strongly biased toward the women finding loving marriages after leaving the abusive relationships. This supports the point that it’s not the women’s fault, but also pushes the narrative that a positive relationship is the ultimate goal and measure of success in healing.

It took me a long time to start reading the book after picking it up. And I did skim a couple of the stories where I didn’t want to read about the verbal abuse the woman was enduring. The bewildered teen looking around to see if anyone will tell her the abuse is wrong and not her fault breaks my heart. But I’m glad I did finally read the book. It is a great resource for people who carry stereotypes about who gets abused and why, both as bystanders and as people who have been abused themselves.

Available via Biblio.com.

“The Book of Love” by Kelly Link

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Recommended to me by: troisoiseaux

This book is a cross between fantasy, romance, and horror. The four main characters are complex, well-drawn teens, which means they are all irritating in one way or another as they try to decide what they want to be when they grow up. The book is in conversation with The Lord of the Rings, but declines to make the struggle about good vs. evil. It is about death, magic, transfer of power, and (given the title), many different ways to express love. And many different ways to love music.

On the positive side, this book has more than one Black character, and they talk to each other about something besides race. Some of them live in the biggest house in the most chic neighborhood, and some of them live in a house in a middle-class neighborhood. They are not “issue” characters, and at the same time they are impacted by racism as they go about their lives, and they name it when that happens.

At times the book reminded me of Pamela Dean’s The Dubious Hills and at times it reminded me of Patricia McKillip’s Riddle-Master trilogy, but without inspiring the same kind of affection I hold for those. I can tell it’s well done, and it wasn’t my kind of thing. Too much body horror, too much casual violence, too much physical and emotional harm done to and by characters we’re supposed to care about.

Everyone else seems to recommend it highly though!

Available at bookshop.org.

“Alexandra’s Riddle” by Elisa Keyston

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Series Northwest Magic, book 1

This is a romance set in a small town in rural Oregon, with connections to the fae realm. The plot tension gets turned up to 11 in a couple of places where I would have preferred a calmer narrative, but maybe that’s part of the genre.

There are some consent issues in the book, not with physical touch, but with a lifetime commitment to a role, along with an anti-selfishness author’s message.

Those grumbles aside, I did read and enjoy the whole thing. The scenery and friendships in the book are well-described, and two women do talk about something other than a man. The scenes where Cass is at her library job sound similar to what I hear from my friend who works at a public library.

Recommended as an entertaining diversion.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Weaving Hope” by Celia Lake

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book coverThis is a gentle romance between two capable, kind people in their 40s. The careful background research about weaving, tapestries, and estates gives the book a solid foundation. It was good to see neurodiverse characters portrayed with respect and treated with kindness.

The characters are skilled at communication and consent. We hear their thoughts as they notice the details of each other’s behavior, but there is a refreshing lack of silence or miscommunication driving the plot.

There are a lot of small details of daily behavior – making tea, using the water closet, navigating a large complex house. The characters are emotionally well-regulated, so the book feels calming to read, even while they work on solving a mystery.

Recommended for a refreshing and peaceful read.

Available from Celia Lake.