Same story, different scene.
Chick lit seeks out culture in Ganek’s debut, an art-world romance.
With more than 300 galleries huddled in Chelsea alone, the New York contemporary art scene is bound to get incestuous. So finds Mia McMurray, a budding “gallerina,” or gallery receptionist (they are known, for the most part, for their haughty attitude, good looks and expensive clothes), at the mediocre Simon Pryce Gallery. But Mia fancies herself different from the others—particularly the loathsome Alexis Belkin—and tells herself that she is working at the gallery only to support her own artistic aspirations. Things heat up at the gallery when Simon holds a show for the talented but unknown Jeffrey Finelli, who is hit by a taxi on the night of his art opening. Suddenly, demand for the paintings is high, particularly the masterpiece Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him. The painting is desired by a well-known collector, the classless wife of a nouveau riche businessman and other players, but the painting’s muse, Finelli’s estranged niece, Lulu, comes forward and claims that the piece was promised to her. Lulu and Mia forge an unlikely friendship, and, as Mia is thrust head-on into the world she has long admired largely from the sidelines, her romantic life takes an unexpected turn. After insisting that she wouldn’t date Zach Roberts (a young, smart, handsome art dealer) because he makes his money in the art world, Mia finally, predictably, succumbs to his charms. Meanwhile, Lulu quits her Wall Street job to become a painter and falls in love with a famous young artist, and Mia quits the gallery and becomes a writer. The Finelli changes hands again, selling at auction for a remarkable sum. The contemporary art scene is a fun, juicy setting, but Mia is, if not a typical Gallerina, certainly a typical chick-lit heroine: insipid and entirely predictable.
Same story, different scene.Pub Date: June 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-03866-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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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