Always Coming Home (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Always Coming Home is a multimedia novel, including with the text a tape of songs and poetry from the novel's world. Set in Northern California, this novel recounts the history of several peoples in the distant future. In Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987), Le Guin explains how writing “May's Lion,” a story in that collection, helped her to find a way from the Napa Valley of her childhood to the imaginary future of the Na Valley in Always Coming Home.

Le Guin writes in her introduction to the novel that these peoples may not exist and that their future might not take place. The people are, however, present in the book, if not in the real world. She discusses the difficulty of translating this story from the language of the Kesh, comparing her novel to Laozi's Dao De Jing—a book translated into Chinese “at every cycle of Cathay, though it is not available in the original and was written by someone who may not have existed.”

The Kesh have a peaceful, matrilineal society. Their opposites are the aggressive, patrilineal Condors. The history of these peoples is told by Stone Telling, a Kesh woman whose mother was a Kesh but whose father was a Condor. Stone Telling has different names, depending on her stage in life: North Owl, Ayatyu, and Woman Coming Home.

Le Guin's message is that Western civilization's paternalistic aggressiveness needs to be tamed by taking a more maternalistic approach to social structure. Without peace, there may be no future. Her title, Always Coming Home, reflects one of her Taoist themes—to go is to return. All Stone Telling's journeys lead to her return home.

Always Coming Home was viewed by feminist reviewers as a statement that Le Guin had moved toward more woman-centered writing. Here and in Tehanu and most of her work after 1985, Le Guin emphasizes a feminine point of view, but she shows little interest in excluding men or masculine viewpoints from her fiction. As always, she emphasizes balance, cooperation, and mutuality as key values for cultural health and individual happiness.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXI, August, 1985, p. 1597.

Christian Century. CII, November 20, 1985, p. 1070.

Kirkus Reviews. LIII, August 1, 1985, p. 736.

Library Journal. CX, September 15, 1985, p. 93.

Macleans. XCVIII, November 4, 1985, p. 72.

The New York Times Book Review. XC, September 29, 1985, p. 31.

Newsweek. CVI, November 18, 1985, p. 101.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXVIII, August 23, 1985, p. 69.

Time. CXXVI, October 14, 1985, p. 98.

Washington Post Book World. XV, October 6, 1985, p. 11.