I've recently read - and been enthralled by - Virgil's Aeneid, so I thought I'd better take up Lavinia from the tottering piles of my to-read list while the original story was still fresh in my mind. In Virgil, of course, Lavinia is a shadowy figure - barely there, like most of the women (bar Dido). I don't think she got a single line while half the blokes in Italy started stabbing each other over who got to be married to her.

Le Guin rescues her from obscurity with this first-person account, and I had to nod smugly to myself when Lavinia started thinking about the events of the Aeneid because much of what she thought had also passed through my mind. Sucks for her, surrounded by bloodthirsty oiks, but I guess that was the time. However, while I liked Lavinia the character a lot, I found Lavinia the book a little dry in places, and Virgil coming back as dream-spirit just didn't work for me. That being said, it's still an enjoyable read, if not my favourite work of the author's.