”Lobster no longer knew what to think. Man or lobster, which was he?”

not for the faint-hearted, not even for the normal-hearted. Lobster is an absurd parable on how the flavour of vengeance and desire can taste strangely similar, as can love and consumption.

i entered with questions, and left with infinitely more questions. what are silly distinctions like species in the face of certain death? must we always be at war with either our instincts or rationality? what use is attempting to judge or analyse the insignificant things that make our short lives worth living?

”She didn’t want to apologise; wanted to make herself hated for what she was; definitively.”

certainly, this book is confident in its ability to be hated, and totally unapologetic about it.

”But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses, but from the difference, that that love came: and it was itself the bridge, the only bridge, across what divided us.”

this book is known for its androgynous, genderfluid world and its commentary on sexual prejudice, but that does not nearly encompass all that it is. i felt that it asked a broader question: how do we learn to truly see, accept, and connect with those who are vastly different to us, though we may never fully understand them?

by flipping the typical story of space colonisation on its head and making our familiar worldview the "alien" one, Le Guin perceptively and masterfully exposes our flaws to the cold light of Winter. certainly, there are incisive and thought-provoking discussions of sex and gender, but also of trust and loyalty, society and politics, of how we are shaped by our world just as much as it is shaped by us.

our human ambassador Genly possesses many of our flaws, limited perspectives, and fixation on borders and binaries. he is fluent in the native language but inept at the unspoken nuances of communication and fundamentally foreign to the Gethenians. yet his entire mission is to build enough mutual understanding to convince them of the unbelievable. this is a harrowing task, and an incredibly hopeful one.

structurally, there is a slow set-up (though rich in culture and myth) but the pace picks up significantly in the second half. a lot of this consists of a long journey over featureless, uninhabited ice, but the isolation and hardship give rise to a psychological/philosophical journey that is full of joy and suffering in equal measure.

in fact, Left Hand continuously proposes that joy and suffering are inextricable, as are fear and hope, life and death, love and hate. it’s not so much of a revolt against dualism as it is a call to recognise its inadequacy. Le Guin shows through myriad means (politics, gender, morality, myth) how binaries oversimplify and wreak havoc. and yet to deny them entirely isn’t the answer either – for “to oppose something is to maintain it”. learning to hold contradiction without trying to escape or resolve it is, perhaps, the hardest and most rewarding lesson there is.

one that i expect to continue to bear fruit on the next re-read, and the one after that.

”Alone, I cannot change your world. But I can be changed by it. Alone, I must listen, as well as speak. … Not We and They; not I and It; but I and Thou.”

hear me out: Dumas would've made a great DJ.

1. technical skill: i picked this up expecting a fast-paced, plot-driven tale of revenge, and was rewarded with so much more. a riveting telenovela, a rollercoaster ride, a deep vivisection of politics, class, morality, and honour. despite the obvious moral stakes, our narrator rarely steps in to tell us who is right or wrong; instead he lets us watch in horror, awe or vindication — more often all three at once — and make our own judgements. the writing itself is surprisingly readable, marvellously fluent, both painstakingly attentive and remarkably restrained.
2. narrative mastery: crafting an arc is a DJ's whole job: building up energy and releasing it, warming up, peaking, resolving. a novelist does the same with scenes and chapters to create rising/falling tension, climax and resolution. Dumas' build-ups are long and occasionally meandering, but seeded with just enough foreshadowing and dramatic irony to keep the suspense taut, so that when the climax lands, your heart rate spikes and the pay-off is doubly satisfying – then we’re back to zero, and he starts building again for the next drop. he takes us on a long, extravagant detour through Rome when we know our fate lies in Paris. he guides us through the city, punctuates the journey with witty repartee that rolls smoothly into intense monologues proclaiming the coldness of the law, the bold freedom of the artist's life, or the relentless hand of Providence. he throws out layer upon layer, so many characters and subplots that we risk losing the thread, and yet nothing is irrelevant. once he has earned our trust after the first wave, it is easy to sit back and enjoy the ride.
3. reading the room: through all these ups and downs, Dumas knows exactly what his audience wants and plays us like a fiddle, our intrepid maestro dispensing humour, sarcasm, desperation and rage in turn. he pulls us back when our attention strays, leaves space to breathe when a scene grows too heavy, and leads us nimbly from clue to clue. and for all that the plot sprawls across decades, continents and countless intertwined lives, every seemingly loose end is tied up and handed back to us exactly when we need it.

i rest my case.