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Always Coming Home | Introduction

Always Coming Home, the Kafka Award-winning novel published in 1985, marks a departure for one of the world's foremost science fiction and fantasy authors. Often criticized for having too many male protagonists in her novels Ursula K. Le Guin answers with two particularly strong women in this complex and difficult novel. Like many of her other novels, Always Coming Home deals with the duality of everything (life, sex, love, faith, fear), the individual's need to belong, and the interconnection of life with the universe. Le Guin uses the strong female characters Stone Telling and Pandora to explore a culture that is different, yet very familiar, to modern American society. The novel does not have one single story line, but is made of a collection of stories, poems, maps, dictionaries, charts, and songs held together by the three parts of Stone Telling's narrative and Pandora's footnotes and journal entries. Critics raved over the beauty of the poetry and the innovative narrative style, but did voice concern over the novel's difficulty.

Long heralded as America's J. R. R. Tolkien Le Guin has produced Always Coming Home, which is most often compared to Tolkien's Silmarillion—a difficult, but brilliant anthropological exploration of Middle Earth. In her novel, Le Guin envisions a post-apocalyptic world, but one created by natural events and human evolution, not nuclear war. The Kesh live in a future time in what used to be Northern California. Their culture is technologically nonexistent, but socially and personally advanced far beyond twentieth-century American culture. The Valley of the Kesh is a world in which Le Guin can argue for sexual equality, spiritual renewal, environmental awareness, and Utopian ideology. By casting this novel as the work of an objective scientist, she can also explore the thin line between science fact and science fiction.

Always Coming Home Summary

Always Coming Home marks a departure for Le Guin in its two female protagonists and its complex narrative structure. Although she routinely deals with issues of sexual equality, utopianism, and a hopeful outlook for the future, Le Guin's novel approaches these ideas through the use of sociology, anthropology, and folklore which forces her readers to explore and compare the cultures of the Kesh and Condors to their own.

Part I
After a two-page introduction on the idea of future archaeology, Le Guin launches into the single narrative thread of Always Coming Home—the life story of the Kesh woman known as Stone Telling. Her first name is North Owl and she begins by introducing the major influences in her life. These influences are her mother. Willow, her grandmother, Valiant, and her father, the Condor man, Kills. Stone Telling's story begins like most; she describes her home and how her family fits into the Keshian culture. Valiant is a weaver, yet the family has no sheep for wool, so Stone Telling's family is poor. She relates her earliest memories of her grandmother weaving and how cold the water is in the winter. The narrative continues in the same vein, discussing Stone Telling's childhood, which was normal for a Kesh child, yet did not make her feel a part of the community

The main part of the first narrative concerns the family's trip to Kastoha-na. Valiant wanted to take the therapeutic waters there and visit relatives. While there, Stone Telling sees Condor men for the first time. The importance for both Stone Telling and her mother, Willow, is overwhelming. The Condor men are not part of the Kesh, they are, as Valiant says, of no House. Yet they hold an irresistible fascination for both Stone Telling and Willow. Willow regains some of her lost self-esteem as she talks to the men, mentioning the name of her husband. Stone Telling feels excitement because these men are the same as her father, a father she has never met. Her spirit quest does not quiet her fears about the Valley and she and her family return home more agitated and upset than before.

Kills (also known as Abhao) arrives during one of the Kesh's public religious ceremonies. His arrival is marked by disbelief and discord among the Kesh. War is not an honorable activity for the Kesh; they think it is a foolish, youthful pastime. Yet the Condor men are warriors, obviously on the war path. Many of Stone Telling's neighbors comment on the spiritual sickness of adults who insist on acting like children. Stone Telling, on the other hand, is fascinated and sickened by her father's return. She is torn between the two parts of herself part of her wants to acknowledge the Condor blood in her veins, but a larger part finds it frightening and disgusting. It is only after she gets to know her father that Stone Telling comes to a greater understanding of her parents.

Abhao's arrival has a dramatic effect on the household. Willow becomes a full person again, happy and industrious. Valiant remains silent in her own home, but does not like Abhao's behavior, which she considers to be laziness. Abhao refuses to work for he feels that would be beneath him. He has returned to the Valley after nine years to see the girl he had seduced,... » Complete Always Coming Home Summary