An engaging and surprising tale of transformation, told in almost allegorical form, perfect for fans of second chances and...
A middle-aged man travels from Iceland to an unnamed, war-torn country with plans of committing suicide.
Jónas Ebeneser has recently discovered that his adult daughter, Waterlily, is not his biological child. Considering his recently dissolved marriage and his lack of biological connection to his daughter, Jónas decides he has little left to live for. He begins planning his suicide but gets held up by logistics. First, he worries that disposing of his personal belongings will prove emotionally taxing for his daughter, so he begins emptying his home of his personal effects. Next, he concludes that his daughter should not be the one to find his body. So instead of shooting himself at home, Jónas decides to simply go away, disappear. He buys a plane ticket to a country that has just emerged from a devastating war on its own soil. Reserving a room at the mysterious Hotel Silence, he brings only one change of clothes, his diaries, and a tool box, in case affixing a hook to the ceiling might hasten his journey toward death. Ravaged by land mines, violence, and loss, the area surrounding Hotel Silence is a wasteland of dust and desperation. Jónas can’t help but notice the hotel’s glaring state of disrepair, and he begins using his tools to make small improvements, tightening a screw here, unclogging water pipes there. Word of Jónas’ handy nature spreads quickly, and he is suddenly being asked by all manner of folk to makes repairs for them in their homes and places of business around town. With so many men lost in the recent war, Jónas is treated as though he’s the only handyman in the entire country. People can’t get enough of him, and Jónas begins to wonder if he has found a new home. Told in surreal, almost Kafkaesque prose, Ólafsdóttir’s (Butterflies in November, 2014, etc.) stunning story is about one man’s unexpected reawakening.
An engaging and surprising tale of transformation, told in almost allegorical form, perfect for fans of second chances and evolving perspectives.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2750-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 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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