The Left Hand of Darkness

“We are inside, the two of us, in shelter, at rest, at the center of all things.”

My thoughts on this book are complicated but my feelings are not: I loved it. The language is beautiful, the worldbuilding is stellar, the mysticism is intriguing, and the characters feel more real in a few hundred pages than many do over the course of whole sagas. Estraven and Genly's relationship is one of the most effective alien-friendships I've read, and their lug across the ice is deeply moving. (It also has some of the most thought-provoking lines in a book full of them.)

No book is truly timeless, but “The Left Hand of Darkness” comes closer than many, I think, by embracing the limitations of its characters. LeGuin herself regretted the use of he/him pronouns for these androgynous aliens, and yet at the same time it makes perfect sense given our unreliable (misogynistic) narrator, who for most of the book can't allow himself to see the femininity in these intelligent, capable beings. And if the fact that Genly Ai can still be a misogynist in this enlightened future should chafe, LeGuin does say in the introduction that her goal is not to predict the future but to describe the present. Ai's clumsy narration - and even the universalist-humanitarian order he represents - is as much as subject of critique as the Cold War analogues satirized in Karhide and Orgota. Nothing is exempt from skepticism and yet the book never feels dragged down in it. It's even quite funny (Estraven is a catty bitch from Karhide who lives for intrigue, what can I say?).

Anyway there is much, much more to this book that I am still mulling over but the five star rating is crystal-clear.