Super Short Summary

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin reimagines part of Virgil’s Aeneid from the perspective of Aeneas’s wife, Lavinia, expanding her minor role in the epic. The novel delves into Lavinia's life, her interactions with her family, her friendship with a farmer’s daughter, and her eventual marriage to Aeneas. Lavinia’s awareness of her fictional status alters her view on fate, and as wars unfold, her story extends beyond Aeneas’s death to her own transformation. This novel includes discussions of death by suicide, enslavement, physical abuse, and child death.