Glimpsed only briefly in Virgil's epic, Lavinia is the silent Italian maiden promised by her father, King Latinus, to Aeneas, the defeated Trojan hero sent by the gods to found the Roman line. Latinus's decision to offer Lavinia to Aeneas, guided by prophecy, provokes her suitor, Turnus, and soon the region is plunged into the war that fills the second half of "The Aeneid." Lavinia appears only a handful of times to weep, blush, and cast down her eyes. Her greatest moment comes when her hair briefly catches fire - a sign that she is destined for glory but will bring her people war.
In Le Guin's novel, Lavinia seizes the chance to tell her own story. Even as a teenager, she is no wilting flower but a fierce young woman who opposes her betrothal to the predatory Turnus. Aeneas, meanwhile, she accepts with mystical confidence, even as she comments that she is being "exchanged like a cup or a piece of clothing." But "things were going as they should go," she tells us, "and in going with them I was free."
This stew of feminism and pop-Buddhist philosophy seems misplaced in a 12th-century BC lass, and other such anachronistic moments occasionally jar us out of the story. ("That boy with the red cap is gorgeous," Lavinia's best friend whispers as they spy on the Trojans, as if scoping out guys at the mall.) And one device troubles the book's early pages: At a sacred place in the forest, Lavinia encounters the spirit of Virgil - "My poet," as she calls him. Poor Virgil is charged with much foretelling of Lavinia's future, as well as guilt about having gotten her wrong. It's a clumsy way of giving Lavinia information, and more metafiction than necessary.
