Rating: 
Summary: couldn't finish, though she's my favorite author
Review: If you read her book on how to be a good writer, this novel breaks all her own advice. It is not a story that follows characters wherever they will go, but a way to promote new-age ideals like tai chi over aerobics, herb tea over coffee, country living over city living, grass-roots over government, and in promotion of daoism. I am generally in favor of the same ideals, but I don't think it is appropriate for a novel to do the judging for us... a good novel allows the reader to see the consequences and judge for themselves. I read more than half the book, hoping for something different, but the middle of the book became more and more clogged with promoting her own opinions: exactly what the theme of the book intends to judge. A terrible irony! Now, I must concede, she is a smart woman: maybe she has written so judgmentally (in favor of daoism) to make fun of her self... this would be a clever irony. But if this is the conscious intention of the novel, wouldn't you think some hint of this would have been given by halfway through the dragging plot?
Rating: 
Summary: Thin, thin, thin
Review: I am a great fan of Le Guin's. She writes beautifully and intelligently, and she always explores some interesting sociological or anthropological concept in her writings. But she normally has a good solid story that the concept lives within, as well as excellent character development. Not here! This isn't a concept living within a story, it's a philosophical tract thinly disguised as a story. And I didn't connect with the characters at all. All right, I speedread. I do that when I get bored. Maybe I missed something. But I'm not going back to look for it. Life's too short. I move a lot; I limit my collection of books, but "Tehanu", "The Beginning Place", and "The Dispossessed" have travelled thousands of miles with me. Not "The Telling." I'm only glad I got it from the library and didn't spend money on it.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful book, SO underrated!!
Review: The Telling was my first U.K.LeGuin book, and I was instantly hooked. I read more of her work later, but this is still one of my favorites. I was quite shocked at the mediocre-to-bad reviews that the book got on Amazon.But, if you think of it, of course it's not so surprising. The other reviewers are probably all (or at least, mostly) from the ruling culture of today's earth, the West. (To top it all, they are perhaps also White and American.) They have probably not seen their culture and lifestyle being replaced and forced-out by a 'superior' culture, as people all over the Third World today are witnessing. I could imagine that the plight of the Eastern Akans is totally foreign to them, the nearest they can think of is a Tao-vs-Mao analogy, or a China-Tibet thing that is so popular to talk about in the West. Ahh, if you saw your world fall apart in front of your eyes, if you watched your people turning into a hollow imitation of the West, and the coconut-water on your streets being driven away by coca-cola... then, maybe then, you'd appreciate the Eastern Akan phenomenon in a way that the book wouldn't seem like an abstract political lecture. Your position and identity WILL affect the way you see things, no matter how intelligent, or liberal, you are. The ruling caste and the oppressed will often get totally different things out of the same book. Having said that, how does Ursula LeGuin, white lady from California, write as she does? Was she an opressed-colonized in her last life? A 3rd-worlder, a darkskinned slave --- to know our pain and our transformations so well? I don't know. With LeGuin, I've stopped wondering. Ursula is a PHENOMENON. A great. I wish I had discovered her earlier in my life. The different reactions that the rulers (North-American/European) and the ruled (3rd-World) readers have to this book is actually quite typical. My Canadian friend, upon reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart,recoiled at the 'violence of the old culture'. Reading the same book, I saw the Colonizing British, from other Colonized eyes. Garcia-Marquez is an instant hit to readers in Asia, Africa, Latin America; he touches a deep core in all former-colony people. Many 1st-World readers think he is okay, or mediocre. Some previous reviewer said something about one-dimensional characters... Sutty? ONE-DIMENSIONAL? I'm sorry, I must be missing something here? I thought Sutty's pain and mourning screamed out at me throughout the book. And near the end, the revelation! Pao the lover, killed by religious zealots, and how it contradicts to now help preserve old religion on Aka, and memories of Pao, and how she must still do what her conscience tells her to do, and learn about the old culture, and protect something very valuable from being lost. And how secularism can be as intolerant as religion, Especially when, instead of secular-practical philosophy coming out of Enlightenment, it comes from blind/forced imitation of percieived-superior aliens, the Ekumen in poor Aka's case, the West in the case of 3 million poor people in my suffering Third World today. And the Monitor character, One-Dimensional? I thought it was totally brilliant how he was made to transform, in the readers' eyes, from a caricature police-villain in the beginning of the book, into a conflicted, tortured being at the end. And which person in the Third World today does not know some of that same conflict? How many of us were born of parents and grandparents of one universe, but grew up into another, and were forced to adopt and acculturate as the omnivorous West eats up all other universes... and what conflicts we hold within ourselves! Converted to the Dovzan capitalist-producer-consumer ideas, but able to read the old texts. Of the West, but of the East. Speaking Yoruba at home, but English in school. Born of slaves, but lost their culture and serving the Dominant group. One-Dimensional? Maybe to the Rulers' eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: Unfortunately this book was my introduction to LeGuin and I don't think I will ever be able to read anything else she's done because of it. I'll keep the review simple; The Telling was pretentious, plotless and without character development. I also got the impression that LeGuin was feeling pretty clever when she wrote it. It comes across as a mere outline for a novel; unfinished and exceptionally boring to the point that I could not bring myself to finish it. Please don't start here as I'm sure her other works MUST be better than this based on her reputation.
Rating: 
Summary: Expected more than I got
Review: Like many here, I too am a LeGuin fan. I have most of her books, including her essays. I would rank the Telling w/ some of her less successful attempts, like "World is the Word for Forest" and "City of Illusion". I thought the novel started well and I was enjoying it until Sutty got deep into her studies w/ the folks in the mountains. At that point the parallells to China and Tibet and didactic tone overpowered the rest of the story. I liked her vision of the Earth in the throes of theocracy and I loved the love story of Pao and Sutty... Although the pun of the name "Pao" with the Chinese character used in the words for "firecracker", "artillery", etc. I hope was unintentional, if not, I think it was in bad taste. Still, mediocre LeGuin is still much better than the best that some authors produce. I am glad I bought the book, and I won't be selling it at my next garage sale.
Rating:
Summary: A Vibrant Literary Experience
Review: In this book Ursula K. Le Guin creates a world where technology is the all seeing, all doing God of the people. A world where the old ways are condemned and literature and art are "corpse rotten" and have to be destroyed. There are no books to read and no history to remember. Only a consumer-producer society is acceptable, and anyone who deviates from this path is condemned, punished and forcibly re-educated. Enter Sutty Dass a young girl of East Indian descent who is desperate to hold onto the past whilst living in the future. On the plant Aka as an official observer she gets the chance to see the past as it used to be, in fragments so tantalizingly small you can only get a taste of what used to be. But Sutty is an intelligent young woman and she realizes very quickly that the old ways are not as dead as the technology-controlled government would like to believe and an underground system of "telling" the past has sprung up in order for people to remember what once was. What starts as a job of work for Sutty, becomes a spiritual quest for redemption in the guise of story telling and mystical encounters. Sutty herself is being reborn from the flames of the past, as her name implies, as Suttee means death by fire for widows and Sutty is a widow of sorts. We find ourselves gently drawn into this illicit world of Guru's, mystics and ancient wise ones, whilst looking over our shoulders for the ever-present danger of Government Monitors whose task it is stamp on everything to do with the past. We are eventually led to a hidden library high in the Aka mountains and it is here that Sutty learns the true meaning of the past and how she as an outsider can help redress the balance for those who hanker for the old days, and those who fear the loss of technology. A vibrant book, filled with laughter and tears, and a host of characters who are larger than life and totally memorable. This is a novel for those readers who like a book to get their teeth into, a novel, which makes them think and wonder, and then think so more. An excellent and understated read that deserves six stars out of five in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: All the mistakes she has heretofore avoided
Review: One of the great things about Le Guin's works is her ability to portray "real" people and let stories tell themselves. This is not true of "The Telling". The characters are appallingly one-dimensional, the narrative is tediously didactic and the Tibetan allegory is ham-fisted. There is nothing to recommend this book to anyone. The prose is so-so, there is no drama to speak of and her socio-political maunderings in this book are frankly an embarrassment when compared to "The Left Hand of Darkness", "The Dispossessed" or "Four Ways to Forgiveness". The trouble with sub-texts delivered in this fashion (and believe me there's precious little that's "sub" about it) is that they do not require the reader to think or feel for him- or herself. It is only through thinking about these issues for ourselves and examining our *own* individual feelings about them that we can integrate the moral lessons into our life. "The Telling" shows us cheap caricatures of sexism, materialism, totalinarianism, and so forth and tells us merely that they are "bad" things. Her more usual shades-of-grey, almost dispassionate style is a far more effective (and enjoyable) way of treating this issues. It also leaves us with more hope. Only buy this book if you want to see why her other books are so good.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Of all the LeGuin books I've read so far, this is the most beautifully worded. Every sentence is a little masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Too literal
Review: Ursula K. Le Guin usually imagines faraway worlds with societies and problems that resemble our own, but are usually unique enough to fascinate the reader. In "The Telling", her producer-consumer society seems too much like China in the cultural revolution, while the outlying mountainous region seems like a carbon-copy of Tibet, complete with old wooden monasteries being buldozed by the new regime. The religious Telling is slightly interesting but seems contrived, unlike the detailed portrait of Odo's anarchic society in the Dispossessed. And as with all her books, the ending is too convienient.
Rating:
Summary: Trying to Be Fair
Review: A fan of Ursula K. LeGuin who loved THE DISPOSESSED might have the wrong expectations about THE TELLING. Gone are the intrigues of plot, the psychological complexities, the paradoxical choices. Instead we are presented with LeGuin's lucid poetic style and richness of image in the form of an allegory. There is nothing inherently wrong with political treatise, and certainly the criticisms LeGuin offers of our "producer-consumer" culture are valid. The solution she produces to the "something-for-nothing" dilemma of shared technology is well-supported as her plot unfolds. The problem is, this isn't truly a novel. How readers will respond to it will depend entirely on their expectations.
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