These stories by Smith (Buffalo Nickel, 1989, etc.) set in the southwestern US and Mexico evoke their steamy setting ably, but they won't make readers sizzle. Smith has a strong command of traditional short-story forms- -letter, fable, straight narrative—from which he does not waver. He creates round characters, whose types vary widely, but all of whom remain realistic. His plots are consistently imaginative and well-executed. In short, he is sturdy and moderate, an excellent artisan. In many of the stories, differences of culture, race, and class lead characters to epiphanies. ``The Plantation Club'' contrasts two white-boy wannabe musicians with the serious black jazz culture of a small town. ``Child Guidance'' compares American professors on sabbatical in Mexico to their 14-year-old hustler tour guide, Enrique, or Henry. ``Plane'' and ``Domestic Help'' create drama by solving small mysteries. In ``Plane,'' a father tries to fathom how his loser of a son paid for an expensive birthday present, then wrestles with the dilemma of whether or not to keep it. ``Domestic Help'' depicts an odd love triangle between Vera, a gringa in Mexico, her maid, and the maid's husband: What is Vera's relationship to the husband? Will the outsider prevail in a close-knit village? The most impressive story is ``Tickler,'' about a boy's perception of his parents' not-our-kind-dear friends, the Kneus, and their impending divorce. It filters the complexities of adult social rituals through the boy's eyes, resulting in a detailed, contemplative, and clear portrait of an interaction that is subtle, comic, and selectively misunderstood. Smith eschews brilliance for competence and reliability. His stories are like the nice boy you date while looking over your shoulder for a rebel.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87565-131-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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