Unabashedly romantic and unafraid of melancholy, Asher’s book is a real charmer about a Provencal house that casts spells...
In an affecting story about loss, a young widow goes to Provence to renovate her family’s home—and hopefully fix her heart.
Young Heidi begins her story with a simple statement: “Grief is a love story told backward.” Heidi’s life with eight-year-old son Abbot has become a memory game to keep her husband Henry alive, and to keep real life—that is a world in which Henry no longer exists—at bay. He died in a car accident a few years ago, and since then Abbot has developed obsessive-compulsive tics and Heidi has all but given up, handing over her bakery to an assistant. Henry and Heidi’s bittersweet story unfolds as Heidi is forced into action, even if it’s only for a few weeks in the summer. There is a house in Provence that has belonged to Heidi’s family for generations—a house that is steeped in stories of romance and coincidence. Heidi and her older sister Elysius spent childhood summers there with their mother. Now a fire has gutted the kitchen and it has been decided that for her own good, Heidi should fix it. She packs up Abbot, Elysius’ 16-year-old step-daughter Charlotte, and enough Henry memories to last six weeks. Heidi, Abbot and Charlotte develop a lazy routine and soon Abbot is washing his hands less, Charlotte scowls less, and Heidi is allowing memories of Henry to rest a little. Next to their house is the home of longtime family friend Véronique and her visiting wayward son Julien (Heidi remembers him as a wayward child too). Just as Heidi is beginning to step into the sunshine, Charlotte’s boyfriend arrives and announces they’re pregnant, Abbot runs away as he spies the budding affection between Heidi and Julien, and Heidi’s mother and sister fly over to straighten everybody out.
Unabashedly romantic and unafraid of melancholy, Asher’s book is a real charmer about a Provencal house that casts spells over the lovelorn.Pub Date: March 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-34390-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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