The Beginning Place

Paradoxically, this book is one of Le Guin's most steeped in realism, yet at the same time most escapist. You'll find no intricate explorations of gender here, no examination of anarchism, no search for meaning. Instead, it's the deceptively simple story of a twenty-something guy with a deadbeat job, a mother with abandonment issues, no real prospects in life, finding some kind of escape in this “beginning place”—could've easily been written by Calvino instead, as a part of his Our Ancestors trilogy for example, more magical realist than straight-up speculative fiction. An escapist romance.