I recall good feelings about having read these stories, now, a half-decade after reading the book. ( )

A strange mix here. I had never read any of LeGuin's realistic fiction, and honestly, I found most of it pretty ho-hum. The stories that purported to be about people and relationships felt more like skimming over a Facebook page, not actually getting to know someone. I'll confess I couldn't even bring myself to finish "Ether, OR," a rambling plotless story told from the points of view of too many residents of a small town. I barely finished "Half Past Four" for the same reasons even though I know it was supposed to be very po-mo. Yawn.

However, some of the stories did draw me in for their creativity: the story of a teenage girl who takes her mentally handicapped mother to a clinic for an abortion, for example.

At times, LeGuin sounded as if she were trying to be Margaret Atwood -- or is Atwood trying to be LeGuin? At any rate, some of the stories had that Atwoodian literary/lettered feel. I especially like the final one, "The Poacher," which tells what would happen if it weren't Prince Charming who found Sleeping Beauty, but a lowly peasant poacher.

At any rate, a few gems here, but I prefer the sci-fi LeGuin.

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While it is true that I prefer Le Guin's SF/F anthropological stories, this book has some gems. The middle section, with "In the Drought,"Ether, OR," and "Unlocking the Air" was my favorite. ( )

An interesting collection of 18 short stories that are more mainstream than her sci-fi. My favorites were Standing Ground; Ether, OR; Olders and The Poacher. Not surprising given my tastes, all but one of these had magical realism or fantasy elements. ( )

This is a collection of Le Guin’s mainstream stories, and though it pains me to say it, I think her genre fiction is much better. Which is not to say her mainstream stories are bad, because they’re extremely well-crafted. And it’s not as though I only appreciate genre stories… because I find a lot of current genre short fiction unreadable, and I like the mainstream short fiction of Helen Simpson, Malcolm Lowry, Rose Tremain, Karen Blixen, and many others. But I didn’t much enjoy another of Le Guin’s mainstream collections, Orsinian Tales, which are linked stories set in an invented town. There is no such linkage in Unlocking the Air. The stories originally appeared in a variety of publications, from The New Yorker to Playboy to, er, Asimov’s, between 1982 and 1995. The one from Asimov’s, ‘Ether, OR’, is borderline genre. The title refers to a town in Oregon, which seems to change location at random intervals, on the coast some times, inland at others; and the story is told from the viewpoints of a number of the residents of the town. Another story is pure mainstream and recounts a daughter taking her mother to an abortion clinic. The stories are feminist, which comes as no surprise; most are told from a female point of view, although not all: ‘The Professor’s Houses’ is about a male professor and the doll house he works on ostensibly for his daughter. The collection all feels very… worthy – well-written stories making important points, but just a bit dull. Ah well. ( )