Catwings

Ursula K. LeGuin

Ursula K. LeGuin is one of the modern masters of the written word. There are certain names that, as soon as they get mentioned, rarefy the very air around the speaker's lips; Doris Lessing, Madeleine L'Engle, Angela Carter, Ursula K. LeGuin, among others. You can walk into any bookshop blindfolded, pick out a book at random by any of them, open to a random page, and you will be confronted with compelling writing that rings with talent.

Catwings, the first of four very small tales from LeGuin, is no exception, though it does (especially for books of less than fifty pages released a year or more apart apiece) seem oddly incapable of standing on its own. For those of us reading these books after the release of all four, this isn't a big thing. I can't imagine those who read them as they came out were terribly happy, though.

Catwings tells the tale of three young cats who, not surprisingly, have wings. They live in an alley in any large metropolitan area, though their mother is concerned for their safety and wants them to move somewhere safer. And, yes, that's pretty much the gist of the entire first book.

Now, this is all well and good. LeGuin is a talented writer, and her subject doesn't matter; any large metropolitan area who hired LeGuin to retool their phone book would find themselves with a massive influx of immigrants wanting to find themselves on its pages. It just seems like there's more to this. And, of course, there are three more books' worth. One wonders why this book ends in this particular place. But, as I said, this is a minor quibble these days, when one can get the entire series out of the library at once (and read all four books in under an hour).