Fourth novel in the author's ancient Rome series. Here (6858 b.c.), in the dwindling wakes of Marius and Sulla (Fortune's Favorites, 1993), is the Colossus, looming in ascent on his way to striding the world—Julius Caesar. Women appear in his orbit now and then, certainly, but the central action is mostly masculine. Nearing 40, Caesar, the handsome, brilliant patrician whose smile rarely reaches his eyes—a former priest, soldier, and diplomat who spent over 20 years in the senate—is back in the Forum, ready to weigh the political heft of potential foes and allies (``clout'' is a word often used). Guardians of the status quo are the viri boni (good men), among them a crafty ``flea'' and a surly Stoic and, on a shaky perimeter, Cicero, the ``golden throated'' orator whose manipulations to quell a conspiracy lead five to death without trial and draw a checkmate from Caesar. Caesar is elected head of the state-administered religion and is affectionate paterfamilias of a bevy of dutiful, decorous Vestal Virgins. And Pompey the Great, the military hero, wiser but still a shade thick and chafing over his lackluster genealogy, becomes not only one of Caesar's triumvirate but his son-in-law, rescuing Caesar's beloved daughter, Julia, from marriage to acne-ed Brutus, the son of Caesar's terrifying mistress Servilia, a woman as hard as the nails she uses to rake flesh. Caesar is winning on most senatorial fronts, and at the close his women (including admirable Aurelia, his mother, and his gentle third wife, Calpurnia) chat it up while word comes from Further Gaul—and Caesar is ``off like the wind.'' Meanwhile, the politicos here, their basic fiber teased from contemporary sources, are not unfamiliar (Caesar hopes that some day the bunch ``will think more of their homeland than . . . getting back at their enemies''). A muscular, convincing re-creation of Rome's political arenaand some legendary combatants. Once again with illustrations, maps, and McCullough's chatty glossary, a pleasure to consult. (Film rights to Filmalpha; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-09371-X
Page Count: 878
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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