Rating: 
Summary: Didactic Environmentalism
Review: "Always Coming Home" is a unique book by a unique author. It is a slow, quiet, rich read. Those (including the author of the 'With Apologies to Ursula LeGuin' review) who read passively and, consequently, cannot hold onto a book that does not compel their attention will be disappointed. To them I would like to reveal the astonishing information that sometimes the best books require more than one attempt. I first essayed this highly-detailed and multi-faceted creation of a future culture embodying native American values in 1998. I found it both fascinating and slow-going, and the library copy was due before I'd covered half the text. Wishing to own the full edition (which comes with a supplementary audiocassette, "Poetry and Music of the Kesh"), I scouted around but, being ignorant of amazon.com at the time, could not find the full 'set' of book + cassette. Then for some reason it slipped my mind. I ran across a used copy the other Sunday in a magnificent bookstore in Stanton, California, and it was like catching sight of an old love again. Now I would like to sing her praises to you. Very few books involve the reader as deeply in the sensibility of a different culture as this one. The descriptions of villages and nature are shot through with the symbolism of a deeply religious way of experiencing the world, a way which is at the same time simple and natural. The central symbol of the gyre or double spiral manifests in the town-planning, artifacts, dancing and education of the Kesh, as well as providing a template for understanding one's passage through life. The complex family and social organization is presented both in schematic form and in the narration of day-to-day customs and interactions. The reading of omens emerging at the heart of the plainest everyday events lends dramatic richness to the course of the narrative portions of the book. However, this is no static account of an insulated society; the Kesh are still in history, and must contend with outside forces that threaten to undermine their peaceful existence, a contention manifested in the intimate relations between Willow, the main narrator's mother, and her husband from outside, the Condor captain of 300 warriors. Nor is this future period presented in isolation from our own present. Here and there the reader is given tantalizing hints of the very different culture of the remote past that built the Straight Road, hints that accelerate and culminate in the haunting section "Of Time and the City," where the Kesh come into contact with the accursed descendants of our own more imbalanced civilization. And here I will stop. The attempt to present a finished presentation of a multi-faceted work comprising narrative, poetry, music, language, and anthropological analysis within 1,000 words must founder. The wonder is that Ms. Le Guin was able to accomplish all of this in less than 600 pages. The only parallel achievement that comes to mind is JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," and while he achieved more scope in thrice the number of pages, in her invented culture of the Kesh she has achieved considerably more depth. The book entices the reader to immerse him or herself in its depth again and again, ever returning to the surface of this world with fresh vision.
Rating: 
Summary: A Slow, Quiet, Rich Read
Review: "Always Coming Home" is a unique book by a unique author. It is a slow, quiet, rich read. Those (including the author of the 'With Apologies to Ursula LeGuin' review) who read passively and, consequently, cannot hold onto a book that does not compel their attention will be disappointed. To them I would like to reveal the astonishing information that sometimes the best books require more than one attempt. I first essayed this highly-detailed and multi-faceted creation of a future culture embodying native American values in 1998. I found it both fascinating and slow-going, and the library copy was due before I'd covered half the text. Wishing to own the full edition (which comes with a supplementary audiocassette, "Poetry and Music of the Kesh"), I scouted around but, being ignorant of amazon.com at the time, could not find the full 'set' of book + cassette. Then for some reason it slipped my mind. I ran across a used copy the other Sunday in a magnificent bookstore in Stanton, California, and it was like catching sight of an old love again. Now I would like to sing her praises to you. Very few books involve the reader as deeply in the sensibility of a different culture as this one. The descriptions of villages and nature are shot through with the symbolism of a deeply religious way of experiencing the world, a way which is at the same time simple and natural. The central symbol of the gyre or double spiral manifests in the town-planning, artifacts, dancing and education of the Kesh, as well as providing a template for understanding one's passage through life. The complex family and social organization is presented both in schematic form and in the narration of day-to-day customs and interactions. The reading of omens emerging at the heart of the plainest everyday events lends dramatic richness to the course of the narrative portions of the book. However, this is no static account of an insulated society; the Kesh are still in history, and must contend with outside forces that threaten to undermine their peaceful existence, a contention manifested in the intimate relations between Willow, the main narrator's mother, and her husband from outside, the Condor captain of 300 warriors. Nor is this future period presented in isolation from our own present. Here and there the reader is given tantalizing hints of the very different culture of the remote past that built the Straight Road, hints that accelerate and culminate in the haunting section "Of Time and the City," where the Kesh come into contact with the accursed descendants of our own more imbalanced civilization. And here I will stop. The attempt to present a finished presentation of a multi-faceted work comprising narrative, poetry, music, language, and anthropological analysis within 1,000 words must founder. The wonder is that Ms. Le Guin was able to accomplish all of this in less than 600 pages. The only parallel achievement that comes to mind is JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," and while he achieved more scope in thrice the number of pages, in her invented culture of the Kesh she has achieved considerably more depth. The book entices the reader to immerse him or herself in its depth again and again, ever returning to the surface of this world with fresh vision.
Rating: 
Summary: Synopsis of Always Coming Home, Utopia with feminist themes
Review: Always Coming Home, by Ursula LeGuin, is a striking and highly readable Utopian novel with feminist themes. LeGuin wrote this work in 1985, and became so wrapped up in the World she created that she published the book with tapes of songs and ceremonies from its supposed inhabitants. This did not help sales, and the book, although very well reviewed at the time and much beloved by its fans, is no longer in print. In the distant future California is inhabited by a people with a culture similar to American Indians, current U.S. culture having polluted itself to death and fallen into the sea just as everyone predicted. These Napa Valley people have profited from Silicon Valley and combine modern computer skills with a simplicity of life close to nature. There is, however, a troublesome, warmaking, male-dominated, city-building culture to the north where Oregon and Washington are now, and this is where the culture clashes come from that allow feminist issues to be developed. The gentle Californians have e-mail, and a group safely far away from the community that is suffering raids and town burnings from the Arab-like northern people keep writing our community that fighting back is wrong, and that they should sit down with these people and discuss things and settle it all by peaceful talking; in a memorable line, someone in the embattled community flames back, "You come here and do that!" Our protagonist, North Owl, is captured by the Arab-like culture as a teenage girl. When she finds her way back after much oppression and many adventures, she takes the second of three names women take to mark major life themes, Woman Coming Home.
Rating:
Summary: An Archaeology of the Future
Review: I truly do not think that any one has ever created a better or more thoroughly thought out alternative future society. It is just so perfectly humane. This isn't a "primitive" society- it is just a society that fully conforms to the natural, traditional way that humans were meant to live. You don't get a sense that this society is just copying Native American culture here, on the contrary, you get a sense that these people are being completely themselves in intimate interconnection with the natural world around them. When you do this it just naturally begins to parallel the Native Americans- without conscious effort. It is appropriate that LeGuinn brings up the Tao te Ching in the introduction. This is a way of life perfectly in accordance with the Tao. The first time I read this book I did not yet realize what a perfect symbol the double spiral motif that runs through all the book, all the society, is. I now get it. You slowly spiral in to the center- then you slowly spiral on out- or up. In spite of the fact that they retain some modern knowledge of technology- appropriate technology- this it isn't a life without work. It isn't a fantasy utopia. Yet, I wouldn't hesitate a second to go there. Another thing, the section on healthy vs. unhealthy generative metaphors for different societies is worth the price of the book alone. Briefly, this compares and contrasts such metaphors as THE WAR, THE LORD, THE MACHINE with those of THE ANIMAL, THE DANCE, THE HOUSE, and THE WAY. It really gets you to think about how the underpinning way that we see the world produces different outcomes. One other thing. I don't think I've ever seen a case where illustrations, maps, songs, poems, myths, tales, etc. all interweave and compliment each other so seamlessly. I didn't think people were smart enough to consciously create a work like this- I'm gratified that at least one person was this smart. I really want to read this again, soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Durkheimian for its own good; problematic as well
Review: I was greatly attached to this book when I first picked it up as a high-school student. Since then, I've cooled slightly towards it. Problems include preachiness, a somewhat simplistic attitude toward both modern-day problems and her own created society, and somewhat of a tendency towards condescension to her audience. At too many points, I felt that her book came off as "MODERN SOCIETY = BAD; KESH = GOOD," or occasionally, "DAYAO = BAD; KESH = GOOD." One reviewer somewhere called her Dayao Condor society a "strawman patriarchal culture," which I would agree with; leaving everything else aside, I felt that she failed to sufficiently acknowledge the many ways in which women can and do hold real power in such societies. From an anthropological standpoint, LeGuin falls prey to the tendency to see "indigenous"--that is to say, non-Western, non-industrialized cultures--as "people without history," that is, essentially static and unchanging. She fails to appreciate that indigenous cultures, too, are cultures that are always in transition; I believe it was Marshall Sahlins who said something to the effect no culture can stay the same without changing. She furthermore blunders headlong into the Durkheimian pitfall of viewing "indigenous" cultures as more or less homogenous and unified systems; she fails to take into account the fact that different subsets of people within the same culture may have very different attitudes and experiences of cultural ideas and practices. One example might be male and female understandings of Kesh ritual and how or whether they differ, particularly since she hints that in Kesh society, men are seen as less welcome in ritual contexts. This is not an area that I feel she explores in enough depth. Her book also has a bad case of "noble savage-itis," and in fact, taking into account the myriad cases in modern society of non-Natives (in particular New Agers) appropriating elements of Native American culture--an appropriation that many Native Americans have called highly offensive--I have to wonder how her book is received by members of the First Nations, since she is clearly drawing on stereotypical tropes about Native Americans here (witness, for example, the use of Coyote as a trickster figure, although her Coyote is female, or her heyimas--hm, large underground ceremonial structures? Any resemblance to kivas is of course entirely unintentional). However, it is clear that she has put a great deal of thought, time and effort into the construction of her Kesh society--complete with writing system, musical notation, poetry, etc. Although her appropriation of Native American cultural elements is questionable, if you can overlook this appropriation as well as the book's flaws as an ethnography, you might find an enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Too Durkheimian for its own good; problematic as well
Review: I was greatly attached to this book when I first picked it up as a high-school student. Since then, I've cooled slightly towards it. Problems include preachiness, a somewhat simplistic attitude toward both modern-day problems and her own created society, and somewhat of a tendency towards condescension to her audience. At too many points, I felt that her book came off as "MODERN SOCIETY = BAD; KESH = GOOD," or occasionally, "DAYAO = BAD; KESH = GOOD." One reviewer somewhere called her Dayao Condor society a "strawman patriarchal culture," which I would agree with; leaving everything else aside, I felt that she failed to sufficiently acknowledge the many ways in which women can and do hold real power in such societies. From an anthropological standpoint, LeGuin falls prey to the tendency to see "indigenous"--that is to say, non-Western, non-industrialized cultures--as "people without history," that is, essentially static and unchanging. She fails to appreciate that indigenous cultures, too, are cultures that are always in transition; I believe it was Marshall Sahlins who said something to the effect no culture can stay the same without changing. She furthermore blunders headlong into the Durkheimian pitfall of viewing "indigenous" cultures as more or less homogenous and unified systems; she fails to take into account the fact that different subsets of people within the same culture may have very different attitudes and experiences of cultural ideas and practices. One example might be male and female understandings of Kesh ritual and how or whether they differ, particularly since she hints that in Kesh society, men are seen as less welcome in ritual contexts. This is not an area that I feel she explores in enough depth. Her book also has a bad case of "noble savage-itis," and in fact, taking into account the myriad cases in modern society of non-Natives (in particular New Agers) appropriating elements of Native American culture--an appropriation that many Native Americans have called highly offensive--I have to wonder how her book is received by members of the First Nations, since she is clearly drawing on stereotypical tropes about Native Americans here (witness, for example, the use of Coyote as a trickster figure, although her Coyote is female, or her heyimas--hm, large underground ceremonial structures? Any resemblance to kivas is of course entirely unintentional). However, it is clear that she has put a great deal of thought, time and effort into the construction of her Kesh society--complete with writing system, musical notation, poetry, etc. Although her appropriation of Native American cultural elements is questionable, if you can overlook this appropriation as well as the book's flaws as an ethnography, you might find an enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Didactic Environmentalism
Review: In most science fiction novels, the future is usually presented as having certain characteristics in an effort to explore an entertaining question of "what if?" So, SF writers constantly write about interstellar civilizations, even though they know that science says spaceships that go faster than light can't exist. This novel is so bad because Le Guin is not writing it to present an interesting "what if," but because she really seems to believe that she can accurately predict what the future should look like. Here, she presents the future that humanity must accept to "live in harmony with nature" and to avoid an "environmental collapse." This preachy and dogmatic book is a failure precisely because Le Guin took the future she was predicting so seriously. One collossal error is her depiction of the warlike Condor. Essentially, Le Guin expresses her disdain for all soldiers and the culture of civic militarism by depicting the Condor as incapable of making rational decisions. Once the Condor embark on a project of reclaiming 20th century technology, abondoned by all human cultures in ACH as inconsistent with a healthy environment, they become so fixated on the tank and the jet plane that they throw all of their resources into creating these weapons. Since the Condor basically operate by subjugating the surrounding subsistentce agrarian societies of the new Earth, they simply do not have the economic resources to pursue these projects, and so they fail. Le Guin has included this completely unbelievable plot twist as a way of overcoming the obvious objection to her proposal that humanity return to a level of technology that pre-dated the industrial revolution: that technology gives nations an advantage in warfare that they would never agree to surrender. Like any consensual cartel, it would only take one country to brake the treaty, and the whole arrangement would collapse. In reality, the Condor would use industrial technology to build enough assault rifles for a small army, and faced with opposition from native populations armed with little more than primative clubs, the Condor would conquer the entire plant in a few months. That the entire premise of Le Guin's book is totally preposterous would not be so bad if the world she depicted were simply a foil for an interesting story that shed light on the human condition. But the world she has created is an end unto itself, and what's worse, is this is Le Guin's take on the utopia we should all strive for. This is one of the worst pieces of SF ever written.
Rating:
Summary: Lyrical and Luminous
Review: The New York Times review, I think, described "Always Coming Home" as lyrical and luminous. It's an extraordinary vision. The first edition came with a companion music cassette composed by Todd Barton.
Rating:
Summary: It can take a lifetime to go thirty miles, and come back.
Review: The Oxford Times said of 'Always Coming Home' that "sometimes you open a book and find in a dozen pages the world inside more solid than the room where you sit". It is definitely such a book. From the obscurity of the future, Le Guin has drawn a people that are at the same time as wild as their surroundings and as civilised as we, as human beings, could ever hope to be. She says in her first note that the people who call themselves the Kesh might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California. The emphasis in this first note should be placed on the 'might', this is utterly and completely a work of speculative fiction. It is a marvelous thought-experiment that allows us to peek at the way the world might be, at one possible destination. But the world Le Guin has created is not a Utopia, although the idyllic, slow-paced nature of the Kesh is an attractive prospect. Nothing in Le Guin's work comes easily, she is not a woman that believes in easy answers. This is an admirable quality. If anything, I would say that the world the Kesh inhabit is a critical utopia, it is a hope for a better future, but one that is flawed, and this is the way Le Guin has intended it to be. It is what makes the work so believable and so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. The wilderness of the Kesh is neither better or worse than our own. It is simply different. hence its appeal. I believe the seeds for this book were sown during the author's summer holidays to the Napa Valley as a child and teenager, where she roamed the hills and creekbeds and devoured books as only a young adult can. This is a work that has grown out of the geographical imagition of a child, and later, the earnest, hopeful, complex, strong-willed mind of an adult hoping for a better world, aware that it may not be possible. 'Always Coming Home' is imbued with the strongest and most deeply felt 'sense of place' I have ever encountered, her world is so deeply realised, so easy to step into. It is a masterpiece for so many reasons, a critical exploration of utopia, a work of ecocriticsm (the study of the way ecological principles, landscape studies and literature meet), as well as an experimental novel that lets informal and formal voices stand side by side, a work that lets the voices of the people of the Kesh speak for themselves, their poems, their personal and social histories, their rituals framing a more organised central narrative in which a young woman learns what it means to be an outsider, and what it means to know a place called home. It has been over 15 years since Always Coming Home was written, but I think that the potential for personal understanding and scholarship that it carries with it is still untapped. It's not a book for everyone, but those that it is for will love it dearly all their lives. I recommend trying to find the first edition by Grafton Books for its beautiful cover illustration by Mike Van Houten, it captures the balmy twilight of the valley perfectly, the way the 'roots of the valley are in wilderness, in dreaming, in dying, in eternity'. The true timelessness of a land and a people that haven't even existed yet.
Rating:
Summary: It can take a lifetime to go thirty miles, and come back.
Review: The Oxford Times said of 'Always Coming Home' that "sometimes you open a book and find in a dozen pages the world inside more solid than the room where you sit". It is definitely such a book. From the obscurity of the future, Le Guin has drawn a people that are at the same time as wild as their surroundings and as civilised as we, as human beings, could ever hope to be. She says in her first note that the people who call themselves the Kesh might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California. The emphasis in this first note should be placed on the 'might', this is utterly and completely a work of speculative fiction. It is a marvelous thought-experiment that allows us to peek at the way the world might be, at one possible destination. But the world Le Guin has created is not a Utopia, although the idyllic, slow-paced nature of the Kesh is an attractive prospect. Nothing in Le Guin's work comes easily, she is not a woman that believes in easy answers. This is an admirable quality. If anything, I would say that the world the Kesh inhabit is a critical utopia, it is a hope for a better future, but one that is flawed, and this is the way Le Guin has intended it to be. It is what makes the work so believable and so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. The wilderness of the Kesh is neither better or worse than our own. It is simply different. hence its appeal. I believe the seeds for this book were sown during the author's summer holidays to the Napa Valley as a child and teenager, where she roamed the hills and creekbeds and devoured books as only a young adult can. This is a work that has grown out of the geographical imagition of a child, and later, the earnest, hopeful, complex, strong-willed mind of an adult hoping for a better world, aware that it may not be possible. 'Always Coming Home' is imbued with the strongest and most deeply felt 'sense of place' I have ever encountered, her world is so deeply realised, so easy to step into. It is a masterpiece for so many reasons, a critical exploration of utopia, a work of ecocriticsm (the study of the way ecological principles, landscape studies and literature meet), as well as an experimental novel that lets informal and formal voices stand side by side, a work that lets the voices of the people of the Kesh speak for themselves, their poems, their personal and social histories, their rituals framing a more organised central narrative in which a young woman learns what it means to be an outsider, and what it means to know a place called home. It has been over 15 years since Always Coming Home was written, but I think that the potential for personal understanding and scholarship that it carries with it is still untapped. It's not a book for everyone, but those that it is for will love it dearly all their lives. I recommend trying to find the first edition by Grafton Books for its beautiful cover illustration by Mike Van Houten, it captures the balmy twilight of the valley perfectly, the way the 'roots of the valley are in wilderness, in dreaming, in dying, in eternity'. The true timelessness of a land and a people that haven't even existed yet.
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