Seems to be not much of anybody home here, though actual inhabitants may not always be a requirement for the...
A poorly considered betrothal to a loathsome man falls apart in a not-particularly-interesting fashion in this debut from a child model and occasional comic.
As much as its musings about being a 29-year-old single woman in Manhattan seem like leftovers from the last five novels of its ilk, Hruby did come up with an unusual occupation for its main character—wholesale fish buyer. Catherine Lacey is on the verge of marrying Steve, a monied, arrogant bastard of a lawyer who’s desperate to make partner and is increasingly dismissive of Catherine’s wants and needs. As Catherine’s narration incessantly reminds us, she grew up blue-collar: gutting fish, hanging out with dockhands, and having no-strings affairs. This doesn’t sit well with Steve as the two get closer to being married, and the resulting pressure on Catherine is creating some big rifts in their relationship. Pretty soon the wedding’s off. Even though this is what she wanted, Catherine is conflicted, having the not-entirely-incorrect feeling that she’s one of the last women in her circle of acquaintances neither married nor on the verge of it. Hruby’s tale seems to think of itself as a light and entertaining read about relationships but takes itself much too seriously for that to work. In a novel where little is going on in the way of plot, the narrator needs to have an interesting inner life, or at least an engrossing conversation or two. But instead of interiority, Hruby offers only more background data about Catherine—ladled up in lumps and dollops throughout—as if hoping in this way to endow her with breath and life. It just doesn’t happen.
Seems to be not much of anybody home here, though actual inhabitants may not always be a requirement for the single-girl-in-the-city genre.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-94640-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
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
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