Stanford professor Djerassi (Menachem’s Seed, etc.), eminent chemist and —Father of the Pill,— here concludes his ’science-in-fiction— tetralogy with another speculation about the frontiers of sexuality, this time concerning the effects of nitric oxide (NO) on male impotence. Carefully distinguishing his work from generic science fiction, Djerassi claims that his science is accurate, while implying that the ’science— of science fiction isn—t. He seeks to portray the —tribal behavior— of scientists, typically displayed as they work out methods to test a new theory—in this case, the effect of NO on penile erection. Then there are also the potential hazards of any new treatment to consider: its carcinogenic potential, for instance, duly tested in experiments with laboratory rats. The sometimes pompous Djerassi well knows this world, and his arch sexual humor is fun. Less persuasive, though, is the scientist-as-storyteller. First, Djerassi scuttles the suspense of whether NO will work at all simply by announcing to the reader that it does—both in an introduction and in his first chapter. Second, his protagonist and principal NO researcher, 26-year-old Renu Krishnan, is more of an ideal than a character. Back home in India, her brother and widowed mother continually urge Renu to marry and take up a normal Indian woman’s life, but Renu, insisting that she chart her own course, falls for an Israeli scientist, Jephtah Cohn, who has invented a device for injecting NO (and even tries it himself). The two become lovers but entertain doubts about male and female roles, Judaism vs. Hinduism, etc. As though meant to illustrate a theory of people, yet failing ever really to seem like people, the characters remain constructs who lack humanizing rough edges. Entertaining enough, but all the hoopla over Viagra has somewhat undermined Djerassi’s premise—and his moxie. But for insight into the grants apparatus, the bureaucracy of science, and the way scientists think and work, Djerassi’s your man.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8203-2032-3
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998
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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