Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

*Spoilers ahead.  Read at your own Risk.*

This novella is the first non-science-fiction/non-fantasy work of Le Guin’s that we have read. It is, however, pure Le Guin, as it deals with one of her central themes: how two people connect across the gulf of our own minds and experiences.

When we began it, neither Ann nor I was particularly excited, since it felt so very much like a young adult novel, with a wise-cracking teen narrator who is both smart and lonely, feeling like a freak among his “normal” peers.  It’s not really until Natalie enters the picture that the novel takes off.  Once our two protagonists met on the bus, we knew we were going to be okay because Le Guin was going to do one of the things that she does best.

The length and limits of the novella speak of Le Guin’s focus and her ability to get right to the heart of the matter.  We are used to Le Guin’s stories taking their time, unfolding gradually and organically.  There is no such wandering in Very Far Away from Anywhere Else.  It’s not that there’s rushing or shut-off avenues; it’s just that this is a story about the complicated nature of love between a young man and a young woman.  The novella could easily have been expanded by exploring other facets of young adulthood as so many young adult novels have done, looking at all the tough parts of growing up.  I appreciate Le Guin’s unswerving attention to Owen and Natalie’s relationship.

I also appreciate that this is not a story about how Natalie saved or ruined Owen’s life.  Natalie does save Owen’s life in her own way, but her purpose in the story is not just to save Owen.  Natalie is a woman of focus and ambition who does not want anything to distract from those dreams.  Owen’s story is of how he learned he was not alone in the world and that he should not sell out his own dreams to live the life his parents (and by extension, society) wants him to live.  Natalie doesn’t just listen to and advise Owen; she is a living example of what Owen needs to see.  Natalie is a friend and an inspiration.

The crisis of the story is when the phantom of romantic love begins to haunt Owen’s mind.  As Owen says, he convinces himself that his fondness for Natalie is capital-L Love, and he begins to play the part of the lover, if only in his own mind.  This pressure echoes the other pressures in Owen’s life, the pressure to live by a script written by someone else.  The things he does as a lover—mooning over her looks, writing poetry, quietly aching in his heart—are all things that American pop culture defines as the behavior of love.

What I love is that in their healing discussion, Natalie confesses that she made mistakes too, that Owen is not the only one who reacted poorly to the love growing between them.  She says, 

The way I figured, I didn’t want to get really involved with anybody.  Falling in love or love affairs or marrying or anything like that.  I’m pretty young, and there’s all these things I have to do. That sounds stupid, but it’s the truth. If I could take sex lightly the way a lot of people do, that would be fine, but I don’t think I can.  I can’t take anything lightly.  Well, see, what was so beautiful was that we got to be friends. . . . I thought we’d really made it, and everybody’s wrong when they say men and women can’t be friends.

Owen apologizes for “pushing the sex stuff in where it didn’t belong,” but Natalie counters, ”Yeah, but it did belong. . . . You can’t just tell sex to go away and come back in two years because I’m busy just now.”  She felt the sexual tension and desire too, and her error was to ignore it because it was inconvenient.  But this realization is not followed by a declaration of love and restructuring of plans.  Natalie’s solution appears to be to move forward as before but with the full awareness of what they both feel.  That’s amazing, and beautiful, and everything I expect from Le Guin. 

So many writers skip past the difficult conversations needed to foster true connection between people, using the pressures of love to elide the hard work of communication.  The joy of this novel is that that conversation is made the climactic moment of the story.  As a writer you can’t do that unless you know exactly what you believe about human relationships and love itself.  Le Guin knows, and I can listen to her talk about it all day.