More Mauritius and less Bosnia might have rescued Anderson’s story from the doldrums.
Second-novelist Anderson (Hidden Latitudes, 1996) offers a languid tale about two naturalists on a tropical island guarding their restoration project from unknown saboteurs.
Fran and Christian are the sole inhabitants of tiny Egret Island, a nature reserve just off the coast of Mauritius. Fran’s mission, a reverse Darwinism (“the survival of the weakest”), is to restore the island to its pre-human state, remove all exotic creatures like monkeys and mongooses, and see that her beloved mourner-birds do not go the way of the dodo. Now middle-aged, Fran was a professor at Berkeley until her husband ended their marriage because she couldn’t give him children. Her Swiss assistant, Christian, is a burnt-out Red Cross official who quit after a brutal hitch in Bosnia, leaving behind his pregnant lover, Nermina, a Muslim. Fran’s former assistant, Satish, a Mauritian, died when his dinghy overturned. There are mysteries here. Was Satish’s death an accident? In what circumstances did Christian abandon Nermina? And who is releasing predators to attack the mourner-birds? Anderson, oh, so slowly drip-feeds us the answers. Christian won’t open up to lonely, bossy Fran about Bosnia but finds release on Mauritius with the lovely Asmita, a restaurant hostess, but ends his courtship abruptly when he realizes she has tricked him into a promise of marriage (too bad the key conversation is missing). When Christian is almost drowned by some locals (the saboteurs?), Fran nurses him back to health, they become, first, confidants, then lovers as Fran reveals that Satish had been her lover too and Christian talks about Nermina, who, he just learned, is still alive, so he must return to Europe. Only at end do we learn that the death of Satish and near-death of Christian were caused by youths working for a corrupt Mauritian businessman who wanted the island for himself; the explanation is feeble and half-hearted.
More Mauritius and less Bosnia might have rescued Anderson’s story from the doldrums.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-33199-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PROFILES
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
