With its busy plot, its drinking and smoking, its crisp wit and contemporary soundtrack (Peggy Lee, “Winter Weather,” etc.),...
In 1950s England, an unconventional young woman develops her reputation as a bold journalist while cherishing—and sometimes forfeiting—a profound female friendship.
Prizewinning British novelist Quinn (Curtain Call, 2015, etc.) opens his epic-length saga of Freya Wyley’s life on VE-Day, May 1945, in the riotous streets of London as crowds celebrate the end of World War II. Freya, who served in the Women’s Royal Naval Services, meets and gets very drunk with unsophisticated Nancy Holdaway, an aspiring writer with a place at Oxford University, like Freya herself. Thus begins a story of female connection, professional ambition, and romantic questing set against a backdrop of England’s social and political postwar shifts. At Oxford, Freya mixes with a colorful group—like flamboyant, foppish actor-wannabe Nat Fane and secretive but handsome Alex McAndrew. Later, in London, where Freya and Nancy share an apartment, some of these figures recur and other semirecognizable ones join the circle. Is that Lucian Freud over there? Meanwhile the spy drama and sexual scandals in which Freya finds herself involved cleverly echo the actual headline stories of that era. Quinn’s finely detailed portrait of the times creates a rich backdrop for a heroine of debatable qualities: “arrogant, devious, and unprincipled”; “fond of stickin’ [her] fork in other people’s dinners.” But in spite of her vanity and pushiness, Freya is a compelling figure, standing up for her work and opinions and learning, usually from her mistakes, that her relationship with quiet, beautiful, and eventually successful Nancy is the backbone of her life.
With its busy plot, its drinking and smoking, its crisp wit and contemporary soundtrack (Peggy Lee, “Winter Weather,” etc.), Quinn's novel delivers evocative, high-quality entertainment that may well leave readers hoping for a sequel.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-160-945-415-9
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
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
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