The promising premise bogs down too often in repetition and excess verbiage.
In Fortier's debut, the rights to which have been sold in 29 territories around the world, a descendant of Juliet goes to Italy to search for her Romeo.
As children, twin sisters Giulietta and Giannozza were sent from Italy to live with their great aunt Rose in Virginia after their parents perished in an auto crash. The children were raised as Julie and Janice Jacobs by Rose and her flamboyant butler Umberto. Now Aunt Rose has died. According to her will, Janice inherits Aunt Rose’s entire estate. Giulietta inherits a key to a safe-deposit box in Siena, Italy, accompanied by a letter from her aunt explaining that her mother left a treasure for her which relates to her true identity: Giulietta Tolomei, whose family tree goes all the way back to the original Giulietta and her twin sister Giannozza. The Tolomeis and the Salimbenis were the actual feuding families, from Siena, on whom Shakespeare based the Capulets and Montagues. Once in Siena, Giulietta discovers that the rivalry is still roiling. Alessandro Salimbeni, the handsome policeman who helps her explore her past, is descended from the evil 14th-century nobleman who forced Juliet to marry him after he arranged not only for the murder of her entire family but also for her fiancé Romeo’s assassination. Romeo was the scion of the Marescotti clan, a military family often embroiled in the Tolomei/Salimbeni wars. Alternating with the present-day story are chapters set in 1340, presenting a far gorier retelling of Romeo and Juliet’s doomed love than Shakespeare imagined. And what of Romeo’s present-day counterpart? As Giulietta grows closer to Alessandro, after he deters a thug who has been tailing her, she’s on the point of deconstructing the family curse, when Janice shows up, claiming that Aunt Rose’s will was a scam serving some nefarious Salimbeni plot. The same dark forces were behind the deaths of their parents, which may have been no accident. And who is Umberto, really?
The promising premise bogs down too often in repetition and excess verbiage.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-345-51610-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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.
