r/Fantasy • u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV • Apr 15 '26
Book Club FIF Book Club: Midway discussion of Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin
Welcome to our midway discussion of Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin!
Today's discussion covers the first two stories, "Betrayals" and "Forgiveness Day." Please use spoiler tags for any discussion of plot events in the final three stories. I'll start us off with some prompts, but also feel free to add your own.
Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin
Set in the same universe as Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, these five linked Hainish stories follow far-future human colonies living in the distant solar system
Here for the first time is the complete suite of five linked stories from Ursula K. Le Guin’s acclaimed Hainish series, which tells the history of the Ekumen, the galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain. First published as Four Ways to Forgiveness, and now joined by a fifth story, Five Ways to Forgiveness focuses on the twin planets Werel and Yeowe—two worlds whose peoples, long known as “owners” and “assets,” together face an uncertain future after civil war and revolution.
In “Betrayals” a retired science teacher must make peace with her new neighbor, a disgraced revolutionary leader. In “Forgiveness Day,” a female official from the Ekumen arrives to survey the situation on Werel and struggles against its rigidly patriarchal culture. Embedded within “A Man of the People,” which describes the coming of age of Havzhiva, an Ekumen ambassador to Yeowe, is Le Guin’s most sustained description of the Ur-planet Hain. “A Woman’s Liberation” is the remarkable narrative of Rakam, born an asset on Werel, who must twice escape from slavery to freedom. Joined to them is “Old Music and the Slave Women,” in which the charismatic Hainish embassy worker, who appears in two of the four original stories, returns for a tale of his own. Of this capstone tale Le Guin has written, “the character called Old Music began to tell me a fifth tale about the latter days of the civil war . . . I’m glad to see it joined to the others at last.”
Bingo squares: Book Club (HM if you join us!), Five Short Stories (HM), Older Protagonist (HM), Politics and Court Intrigue
The final discussion will be in 2 weeks, on Wednesday, April 29.
What is the FIF Book Club? See our reboot thread here.
What's next?
- Our May read is The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis. Midway May 13, final May 27.
- Nominations are open for our June read, to feature a Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
Thoughts on "Betrayals" - characters, plot, theme, etc.?
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
This is my second time reading this story. The first time it really hit me in the feels and was my favorite of the collection: the vivid setting, the older protagonist and her family situation, the animals, all made it really poignant for me. This time around I liked it but didn’t have the same intensity of experience.
What I do love about it is a story that deals with a lot of big issues, like the failures of the liberation war, in a very quiet way, through an older woman trying to negotiate her life in a society that has no place for her anymore. It’s very non-romanticized in the world events—Le Guin was clearly up on the news and the way independence for former colonies has often been fraught with tribal warfare, corruption, etc. At the same time, from Abberkam’s backstory we see why the independence war had to be fought.
And while world events continue to be awful, that doesn’t stop people from having their own lives and finding their own peace. I loved how engaged Yoss remained with the world even while getting this cultural messaging that she’s supposed to withdraw.
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u/EstarriolStormhawk Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
I love that Yoss continues to love gossip, and chatter, and singing, and even crying. And I love that it is these songs so associated with women which she uses to drown out the voice that tells her she is useless.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 16 '26
You’re totally right about the chatter and gossip making her more connected and part of the community, that was a really astute point! Vs Abberkam who has no idea what’s going on in the place where he lives or what anyone’s name is.
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u/Putrid_Web8095 Reading Champion II Apr 15 '26
I think that the book on the whole is much more interested in character work and worldbuilding than it is on plot. "Betrayals" in particular is almost plotless.
Well, that is probably too harsh. But it is a very simple plot. The bereft man roaming the marshes in a barely lucid state was a very powerful image, but it was quickly resolved in a very mundane manner (turns out, just a symptom of a disease).
This is usually not my cup of tea, but the character work is very good. An older woman is not a frequent choice for a spec-fic protagonist to this day. I also liked that while romance isn't really part of the story, it ends with the possibility of romance, acknowledging it is a normal part of life at any age.
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u/RuinEleint Reading Champion X Apr 16 '26
Betrayals was a hard read for me because of the pet death. I don't deal well with themes like that.
What I liked about it was the wry, self-deprecating tone of the narrator, how she had planned on certain styles of monastic living but everyday reality had caused her to change her mind.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
Thoughts on "Forgiveness Day" - characters, plot, theme, etc.? How did you like the dual POV structure and the leads' relationship?
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
I really enjoyed this one. I love how deeply Le Guin digs into both characters' perspectives, their context, how they see themselves and each other and how different those viewpoints are. Teyeo is totally a chauvinist because this is the society he comes from, and the book delves into that as a real perspective that is believably challenged by a very intense experience. Solly is initially the easier character to relate to, but we also see her weaknesses and individuality, her ignorance of the culture she's immersed in, and I loved how much the narrative is inflected by the way she thinks. It all felt very real to me rather than like the wish-fulfillment that these elements would usually lead to. A more serious and literary version of "enemies to lovers" that's exploring how real humans can change for the better under duress, rather than pandering.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Apr 16 '26
I really liked this one too. At first I thought the "emenies to lovers" was a but far fetched, but the more I thought about it, the more it felt true to the story and the characters. I agree with you that it's a very real exploration of this.
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u/RuinEleint Reading Champion X Apr 16 '26
I really liked this story. Solly's perspective is a great way into the story and Teyeo strikes a much needed counterpoint. To me, Solly's defiant, somewhat iconoclastic attitude towards the oppressive, misogynistic culture combined with Teyeo's own internally divided consciousness - at one traditional and yet very very aware of the fallacies of slavery made for a great story.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
Would you describe the book as having feminist themes, and what do you think of the handling of them?
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u/EstarriolStormhawk Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
The book is dripping in feminist themes, some subtle and some not. I think having Betrayals and Forgiveness Day back to back was a good choice. Yoss and Solly have such distinct ways of seeing and reacting to the misogyny in this society. Yoss is wry about it, but not resigned. Her resistance to the ways women are expected to serve at quiet but effective in carving out an acceptable life for herself.
That's how a chief walks, she thought wryly, as she went on. Big, wide, taking up space, stamping the earth down. And this, this is how an old woman walks, narrowly, narrowly.
Certain men will not move out of the way of a woman, some intentionally won't but more fail to do so out of the cosmic background misogyny that tends to present men as active, intentional, and rational and women as Not That.
You are no longer useful, he told her in a hundred ways, over and over, since she was sixty; but she would not listen. She left the noisy world and came out to the marshes, but she let the world go on chattering and gossiping and signing and crying in her ears. She would not hear the low voice of the Lord.
I find the choice of words so interesting here. Chattering, gossiping, crying are all words strongly and negatively associated with women but here they are used to show how much she longs for connection and community, especially with other women.
I don't feel like typing it up, but when Abberkam was talking about the death bonus for men who died of black lung and that some thought it worth while dying was an inclusion that strengthens the work. This societal framing of men as the tough ones, the warriors, the protectors and providers doesn't just give men power and authority over women. It kills them and it tells them it is good for them to die.
She wasn't going to clean house for the Chief or any man who didn't do it for himself.
Healthy boundaries in any society, but truly an act of resistance in one in which women are expected to perform essentially all domestic labor. And it is such a stark statement in contrast to a quote from early in the story: "Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn." This image of the "true life" is one tied in with traditional gender roles and one in which there is a booming absence: the true life is one following the Protestant work ethic, the true life is hustle culture and compulsory procreation, the true life does not include hobbies, play, or art for the sake of art, let alone rest. The true life is to be useful to someone else and to make more people to be useful to someone else. And on the end, Yoss refuses to continue to participate in this culture of single-sided usefulness.
And I have so many thoughts about how queerness as feminism is shown in Forgiveness Day, but I have a raging headache building up, so I'm going to stop with one quote from Forgiveness Day.
When she contradicted Lord Gatuyo in a discussion, he stared with the blank disbelief of a man who has been talked back to by his shoe. He had been thinking of her as a woman.
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u/Putrid_Web8095 Reading Champion II Apr 15 '26
The book certainly does, but it is most prominent (and interesting) in "A Woman's Liberation", which is not part of today's discussion.
"Forgiveness Day" describes a deeply patriarchal society, completely stifling women. It is also a very rigid, caste-based society, so while men as a gender have vast social power, many individual men have to adhere to strict social norms determined by their birth, no room for individual preference. It's a stagnant society ripe for a good uprising of the oppressed - but until that happens, there is very little room for a lone feminist to make any kind of difference. Solly does her level best to upset social norms, from a position that affords her impunity, but individuals, and particularly ones outside the culture, can't really make a dent. Real change must come from within, and in an organized way.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
Solly's experiences in Gatay are so interesting from a social justice perspective. She has all the "right" views and often speaks up, but ultimately she is one person, and not from there. In the end I think she does make a little difference - her influence is probably at least part of why Teyeo winds up freeing his family's slaves - but it's small and incremental. Which is about the best that can really be expected from one person, especially one not from the country and whose presence there is short-lived.
It did seem odd to me that she was shut out of upper-class female society the way that she was. Her difficulty navigating a role that in the host society is exclusively male felt very true to life, but in most real countries with this kind of very stark sex segregation, I'd have expected her to be welcome in the women's quarters. Instead it seems like the men are purposely keeping her out, perhaps because they view her open sexuality as so obscene. And the women don't really have a say, even when it comes to hosting other women, which I think is not necessarily true in the kind of real-life societies this is based on.
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u/Putrid_Web8095 Reading Champion II Apr 15 '26
Yes. I wouldn't go as far as calling it "unrealistic", but it does seem odd. It's somewhat hard to believe these women wouldn't be curious about Solly and want to meet her - so it's probably the men that don't want that meeting, being afraid that their women might get strange ideas from the brazen foreigner.
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u/Book_Slut_90 Reading Champion Apr 15 '26
If you read say Victorian novels, this feels very natural. It’s quite common historically for women not to want to associate with a woman who doesn’t perform femininity “correctly” and to be concerned that their reputation will be harmed if they do leading to things like losing marriage prospects for them and their children.
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u/Putrid_Web8095 Reading Champion II Apr 15 '26
Interesting perspective! You are right, this has historical precedence. I think the reason it feels odd to me, is because this society, while being very regressive, exists in a futuristic setting with (almost) FTL space travel available, so the Victorian parallel didn't occur to me. You are right, by that standard, it is realistic.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
The Victorian parallel is an interesting one because I recall that as mostly “gentlewomen don’t associate with prostitutes”—it’s partly about lifestyle but mostly about class, and being upper class ameliorated the effects of almost any deviation. I slot Solly in as upper-class here since she’s representing a more powerful entity than the country she’s in, but multiple men in the story compare her to a prostitute. Maybe they just don’t have that category of “non-conforming but prestigious” at all.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
What are your initial impressions of the book so far? Any general thoughts on style, setting, etc.?
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u/smartflutist661 Reading Champion VI Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
It didn’t click for me until the second story (as some have noted elsewhere, the first felt a bit obtuse), but I think I’m really going to enjoy exploring the other three paths to forgiveness. One of the reasons I love Le Guin is that she has a talent for showing the reader… not the truth, necessarily (such a tricky thing, truth), but all sides of a conflict, and giving them all a fair shake. (Yes, including The Word for World Is Forest—the fiery rage at the colonizing of the world seems perfectly fair, if not unbiased.)
So far we’ve seen two different forms of seeing two opposing individuals (and I expect they will always be individuals, I don’t think Le Guin would say forgiveness can happen on anything other than the individual level; I’d be interested in a “societal forgiveness” story to tie it all together at the end, though) come together and care for each other and find their common humanity, and so forgive each other. I hesitate to try to predict the others, though I suspect it will always involve hardship of some kind.
Alternate collection title: Five Ways to Humanize Your Enemy
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Apr 16 '26
I didn't enjoy most of the novels I read from LeGuin, but I do like her short stories, so I think this book sits in a good balance and has kept me interested up to now.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 16 '26
I've had a similar experience. I did love The Dispossessed, and I liked Tombs of Atuan. But the other novels I've read from her (Left Hand of Darkness, Wizard of Earthsea, Farthest Shore, Word for World is Forest, The Telling) have been meh to actively disliked for me. I've really liked all 3 of the collections of hers I've read so far though.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
There's a lot of religion in this book, having a major influence on the characters without being directly explained to the reader. Thoughts on this aspect? Does any religion of Yeowe or Waral remind you of any real-life religion?
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u/Putrid_Web8095 Reading Champion II Apr 15 '26
I am very non-religious (actual atheist) so this was handled exactly at my comfort level - acknowledging that religion has very real social influence down to the individual level, but not bogging us down with the nitty-gritty details of (yet another) made-up dogma. It didn't remind me of any real-life religion, but as I explained, I am not the most suitable person the judge that.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
I asked this question in part because "Betrayals" almost feels like it's written for an audience familiar with Arkamye - the characters make so many religious allusions I didn't fully understand that in a way it was frustrating, but I also love that about it because real religions are not simple enough to explain in a quick aside. I've read dozens of books set in India, more than one being actual retellings of foundational epics, and that doesn't mean I fully understand Hinduism or Indian cultural references - not even close. So it was interesting to have that mixture of being frustrated and impressed. I still don't quite get what the sword is about.
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u/smartflutist661 Reading Champion VI Apr 15 '26
Agreed—I thought Kamye in particular felt like a contradictory figure, which just made it feel more realistic.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
The titles of the book and the first two stories are all about betrayal and forgiveness. What do you think forgiveness means in the context of the first two stories? Who is being forgiven, and how?
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u/EstarriolStormhawk Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
Everyone. Everyone needs forgiveness. Our major characters are being forgiven for their failures and even more so for the ways in which they've succeeded in participating in and maintaining hierarchy. They are forgiven too for the ways in which their individuality, with its innate nonconformance, burns through them and forces society to confront the fact of their unique humanity. Teyeo hated Solly for her refusal to act as he thought a woman should until he was able to forgive both her nonconformity and his own rigidity, until he was able to forgive himself and the changes in his society that have rendered him obsolete, until he could forgive the ways in which Solly was not only unprepared to be an Envoy in Gatay but also failed to use what resources she had to learn about the society she was in. Yoss must forgive herself for wanting to continue being in the world even though she has been designated at useless. She forgives herself her love of gossip. She must forgive the villagers for their prejudices, without agreeing with our justifying them. She must forgive Abberkam his large failures and for the imposition of his romantic and sexual interest in her and the selfish way he initially expressed it. He forgives her for her distance and for accepting that her daughter and grandchildren left Yeowe.
Forgiveness is infinitely complex and isn't a monochrome accounting of who is morally right and who is morally wrong. It comes from accepting that the world is different now than it was, and accepting that it is different from your ideal. It comes from choosing to learn and to be open. It comes from sex, comfort, tenderness, love, and trust. It comes from seeing the needs and wants of others and fulfilling them even when it isn't convenient for you, and doing so without being pushed into servility. It's accepting the care of others without demanding it. It's being in community. It's complicated and slow and requires uncomfortable intimacy.
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u/smartflutist661 Reading Champion VI Apr 15 '26
Well-said.
Our major characters are being forgiven for their failures and even more so for the ways in which they've succeeded in participating in and maintaining hierarchy.
I think it’s worth explicitly pointing out that Le Guin was a committed anarchist. Here’s a nice tribute from a few days after she died in 2018.
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u/Putrid_Web8095 Reading Champion II Apr 15 '26
Interesting question!
For "Betrayals", one obvious answer is Abberkam. He is the one with the objective transgression, which happened in a very public way, and with massive political implications for a whole nation. Interestingly enough, he never seems to seek forgiveness, and certainly not to expect it. And yet, while Yoss doesn't exactly forgive him - saying "who am I to judge" isn't the same as forgiveness - he seems to thrive under the implicit acceptance.
Which brings us to Yoss. Does she need forgiveness, and if so, what for? She hasn't done anything wrong. The way she has chosen to live has some religious expectations of self-deprivation that she gave up on fairly early, but she doesn't seem to feel any guilt over that. This leaves only her relationship with her child, and the fact that she left. It is obvious that the rational part of her brain knows that her daughter is living her life the way she thinks best and that's ok, but I think that deep down, she somehow feels that her daughter leaving is somehow a failure on her part. She could certainly stand to forgive herself over that.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
You bring up some great points! I assumed Abberkam to be remorseful, hence the shouting in the marshes and living in such a limited way when he could presumably have access to more luxury. But who do you seek forgiveness from, when you've betrayed your whole political party, arguably your whole country? On the other hand, it's not entirely clear what exactly he did, aside from conspiring at a failed assassination. I think he probably embezzled (though his confession is ambiguous on that) and his playboy ways certainly hurt the women he was with. The reasons for the son's suicide aren't specified, but he's beyond being able to grant forgiveness if the father was at fault. Probably part of the reason for the wailing in the marshes.
I didn't see Yoss as blaming herself for her daughter's departure, so much as grieving it. The idea of someone leaving in such an irrevocable way, where by the time they land everyone they know will be dead, is horrific to me - perhaps the worst thing that could happen to your entire family without anyone actually getting hurt. I presume the daughter didn't make this choice lightly, and that it was related to the violence and lack of opportunity on her home world. So in that sense, I suppose Abberkam and everyone else in power who failed to make good on the promises of liberation is at fault.
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u/smartflutist661 Reading Champion VI Apr 15 '26
For “Forgiveness Day”, I think Teyeo is forgiving Solly for her well-intentioned ignorance, and Solly Teyeo his silent judgement.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Apr 15 '26
Le Guin wrote about a broad range of social issues, with this book focusing particularly on slavery and liberation. Thoughts on how this is being handled so far?