The beginning place is a novel set between worlds. The first world is the world of modern day America, which is presented as shallow, crude, materialistic and full of despair. The two main characters in the book, Irena and Hugh, are young people, living on the margins caught up in this world. They both find escape independently by travelling to the “ain country” or what they come to know as the world of Tembreabrezi. Irena finds this world first by hiking into the woods near her home and coming across, by accident, a wooded grove she comes to call The Beginning Place. Here she finds a gateway that takes her to a country that is homely and warm where she is welcomed by the people of Mountain Town. Mountain Town becomes an escape for her, when at her home in the “real” world she faces family difficulties and problems at work and with friends. Hugh is similarly drawn to the Beginning Place, and also fleeing a difficult home life, stumbles across the same gateway as Irena. There they meet at Mountain Town and are welcomed by the inhabitants as though their own kith and kin. However, Mountain Town and its people are facing a growing and nameless danger that Hugh and Irena must join forces to confront.
Ursula Le Guin, writes in her characteristic lyrical prose style, with beautiful and affecting similes. For example, the master’s house at Mountain Town is described in the following way.
“The air of the long room was tranquil, like the air inside the lip of a thin-walled sea shell.”
The pace of the work is slow and lyrical and there is an element of mystery that keeps the plot moving. Where does the Beginning Place lead to? Who are the people of Mountain Top and what is the relation between our world and theirs? And what is the nature of the great and nameless fear that threatens the people of Mountain Town? Only some of these questions are answered as the novel progresses.
This novel deals with the themes of hope and hopelessness, meaninglessness and lives that matter, rootlessness and rootedness, and fear and the courage needed to overcome fear. It is also a coming of age story as Hugh and Irena find themselves and each other.
The meaning, although one must ask the question as to whether every story told must have a meaning, I think might be found in the beginning to Chapter 7, when Hugh is made to think “He could not be afraid. Death is love’s sister, the sister with the shadowed face”. And after all it has been said that all fear is ultimately fear of death and it is love that saves us. However, that being said, the meaning of the work is not clear to me and it is a little as though the novel seems half-formed. Nevertheless, I think that the novel will stay with me and I feel as though I have been touched by it. I do see however that there could have been the possibility of an alternative ending – about which I will only say “The sea!, the sea!”.
Mindful Writing 