Small in scope, but an elegant foray into beauty gleaned from tragedy.
A lyrical first novel from Pierce (stories: Galaxy Girls: Wonder Women, 1994) about a tragic death and a corresponding
birth. Part expos‚ of survivor’s guilt and part family chronicle, the tale opens with a dramatic crash: driving home drunk one winter night, Leonarda and her boyfriend, Danny, slide off a bridge and into the Charles River, killing Danny and transforming Leo’s life. Driven by the slow exploration of its eccentric characters, the narrative spans nine months, from the accident to the birth of the child Leo didn’t know she was carrying when they crashed. She attempts to continue life as planned, finishing her thesis and preparing her audition piece at the conservatory where she studies violin, while also grappling with the approach of single parenthood in the shadow of death. Slowly rebuilding ties with her otherworldly parents also strains the normally retiring Leo, though at the same time these struggles serve as impetus for her in finding an identity that’s separate both from the domineering Danny and from her dramatically consuming parents. Some of the more engaging episodes spring from Leo’s childhood memories of her family’s blissfully lonely old Cambridge house: sleeping on the widow’s walk, tightrope-walking the banister, creating her own, odd animal sanctuary—raising herself because her parents couldn’t. Lydia, a recluse since Leo’s birth, provided for her daughter little besides an image of sorrowful beauty, while August, when not working in the invention room, doted on his wife. When Leo returns to the family roost, life is unchanged, save that some of the heirlooms have been pawned to pay for toast and tea. Into the small chaos of Leo’s life wanders Kilroy, a chess player with his head in the air and feet on the ground, who offers Leo unconditional love and stability. As the baby’s birth approaches, small miracles start to bloom, transforming all the lives touched by Leo, and by Danny’s death.
Small in scope, but an elegant foray into beauty gleaned from tragedy.Pub Date: March 15, 2000
ISBN: 1-58465-021-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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
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