2020/92: Powers -- Ursula Le Guin

I was able to see, in part at least, why the Mother and Father had betrayed my trust. The master lives in the same trap as the slave, and may find it even harder to see beyond it. [p. 456]

Gavir and his sister Sallo are from the Marshes, but they don't remember their early years: they were enslaved as children, and now serve a wealthy patrician family in the city of Etra. Gavir has an eidetic memory, and the gift of 'remembering things that are going to happen'. The former grants him good treatment and education, since he will grow up to be a teacher, but the latter (according to Sallo) is something he should never mention.

Life is, on the whole, pleasant for Gavir. He is encouraged to read, his duties are light, he likes the Family and most of his fellow slaves. He has enough to eat and a comfortable place to sleep, and he is not beaten. When the Family go to their summer residence, he goes with them, and the children all play together. But he is a slave, and so is Sallo: and when tragedy strikes, Gavir walks away.

And keeps walking. He finds a hermit in the forest, and then a city of outlaws; he finds his way back to the Marshes, but no place for him to remain; he resolves to set out for the distant city of Mesun, to the University where the poet Caspro -- author of Cosmologies, a book that has been Gavir's solace in his wanderings -- lives and works.

The depiction of slavery in this novel reminded me of fictional depictions of slavery in the classical world (think Rosemary Sutcliff, Mary Renault, Lindsay Davies et cetera): caste-based, generally humane, almost just another way of working for a living. Powers showed the underside of that system, and how difficult it is to understand and define individual freedom when one has grown up enslaved. It also contains a harrowing description of what can befall a woman who is merely a possession. (And this is not the only harrowing passage in the novel.)

I found Gavir's wanderings somewhat long-winded and rambling: there was a long stretch in the middle of the book where I wondered if he was ever going to settle, if anything was ever going to resolve. But it does.

Like the previous two novels in the 'Annals of the Western Shore' trilogy (Gifts and Voices) this is a story about the power of stories: Powers balances prophecy and remembrance, and shows how freedom is rooted in an understanding of possibilities: other worlds, other lives.