Peter White’s Reviews > The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia > Status Update

“It isn’t changing around from place to place that keeps you lively. It’s getting time on your side. Working with it, not against it.”

“The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that time is not wasted. Even pain counts.”
Ch10 stands alone at the top of writing. Perfection.

Chapter 7 brings it all to a head. The climax at Vea’s party, the explanation of confrontation of propertarian, ododian, and temporal morality. Exquisite. The incredible ability of Le Guin to create a coherent seeming theory of physics as the basis for her utopian novel.

The first 40 pages are a brilliant hook, introducing this world that pulls you in with its strong ideals and different cultures. Then the end of chapter 2 begins diving deeper into thematic ideas. What is the role of love and pain in one’s growth and relationships? And what does it mean to be “odonian” or a good anarchist?

p54: You can return home as long as you know you’ve never been there before