Muddled but agreeable love story of sorts.
Life and loves of a London literary agent, from Upcher (Grace & Favour, 2001, etc.).
Polly Atwell has always been an ugly duckling—too tall, prone to galumphing—but she did snag a husband, John de Soto, much to the surprise of her bitchy journalist girlfriend Joan. Now that John’s walked out the door and left her—well, he couldn’t exactly walk out the door because it was painted shut by accident—what’s Polly to do? Carry on bravely, with the able assistance of her dotty secretary Mrs. Flowers, that’s what. An independent producer like John certainly had his share of temptations, what with all those trips to Los Angeles and all that hanging around with starlets. Nor does she miss preparing his meals and taking his messages and putting up with his scatterbrained ways, really. But a welcome distraction awaits: Hector O’Neill, famous American actor, is reading the script for Mr. Wrong (one of Polly’s authors wrote the novel), and he’s sure he’s right for the Wrong part. But is he right for Polly? Well, she’ll make up her mind after a brief fling with an adman hoping to pen a novel—it’s all too much to think about now. Meanwhile, John keeps calling, worried about Luana, his nymphomaniac daughter, who’s getting a dreadful reputation for having sex with absolutely anyone. Apparently, Luana has been corresponding with Hector O’Neill, and she’s going to be majorly miffed when she finds out that someone else has bedded the handsome actor. Polly, though, ready to romp at last, wonders why Hector can’t be as much of a man off screen as on. He seems so needy, especially now that Joan has revealed that Hector’s father is a homeless drunk who sleeps on the streets. Will Polly ever find peace? Is that John knocking on her door again?
Muddled but agreeable love story of sorts.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-57566-901-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
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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