A eunuch in the Eastern Roman Empire rises from slavery to power by devious means in this deeply researched historical novel.
Webb, a retired teacher, instructs readers on the oft-overlooked Eastern Roman Empire of late antiquity. She charts roughly 30 years in the harsh life of Eutropius Foot, including a confusingly large (but historically accurate) cast of emperors, generals, bishops and the two bears for whom the book is named. In a helpful appendix that lists historical facts as well as a glossary, Webb indicates that she based her main character on the real Eutropius, immortalized by the poet Claudian in a scathing diatribe. Webb’s Eutropius is born to an unmarried wanderer somewhere near Constantinopolis. His mother dies shortly after childbirth but not before bestowing his odd name. A soft-hearted, impoverished shepherd finds Eutropius next to his dead mother in a field and takes him home to raise as his own until he can sell him into slavery, castrating him so he will bring more money. This betrayal sends Eutropius on a gradual descent into wretchedness. Because there’s a eunuch for a main character, some readers might assume this to be a somewhat sexless tale, but they would be mistaken. Rather, Webb dallies too long in detailing the vulgar sexual acts performed by slaves and prostitutes; even the kind mistress Sophie, a young woman to whom Eutropius is presented as a dowry gift, commands him to pleasure her. Corrupted, Eutropius begins a thankless career as a pimp for a succession of powerful, lusty politicians. While not charismatic, kind or particularly compelling, Eutropius is imbued with insatiable ambition; he worms his way into the graces of a feeble emperor, using deceit and cruelty to affect momentous historical changes until his arrogance causes a satisfying downfall. Eutropius’ tragicomic story is told amid the battle between emerging Christians and the still-present polytheists, whom Webb details with sharp humor. Many, like Eutropius, convert purely for political reasons, and their fumbles with the new religion’s rules make this unlikable protagonist’s tale easier to follow. Moral ambiguity casts a cynical shadow on this unvarnished, detailed glimpse into the formation of Western civilization.
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-1609113407
Page Count: 466
Publisher: Eloquent Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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