From the erudite Markson (Wittgenstein's Mistress, 1990, not reviewed; etc.): a terse, modernist novel implying that history is over, the arts finished—yet offering extended, Beckett- like pleasures. ``Reader'' is the speaker here, and he speaks about ``Protagonist.'' Plot and event? ``Someone nodded hello to Reader on the street yesterday'' pretty much takes care of the action side of things. More crucially, Reader declares that ``I am growing older. I have been in hospitals,'' and asks, ``Do I wish to put certain things down?'' Indeed he does: and the remainder of the book consists of Reader's aphoristic recollections of a lifetime of—well, reading. As these ``memories'' accumulate, Reader does have other questions—whether, as novelist, he should have ``Protagonist'' live on a beach or beside a cemetery (and if a cemetery, who is the woman Protagonist sees coming there each day to mourn?). Other questions include the familiar ``What is a novel in any case?'' Reader conjectures that he's creating ``in some peculiar way. . . an autobiography,'' and asks whether it's ``Nonlinear? Discontinuous? Collage-like?'' (Answers: Yes, yes, and yes.) ``Protagonist has come to this place because he had no life back there at all,'' explains Reader as he continues with his indefatigable, funny, often terribly wrenching tapestry of facts both known and obscure (``Vachel Lindsay committed suicide by drinking Lysol''), quotations homely and exotic (``O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!''), opinions of all literary sorts (``On the evidence, Shakespeare's small Latin was plainly more than that''), and assertions in a continuing refrain ``Arnold Toynbee was an anti-Semite''). A novel, in all, for the ultra-readerly only, though in its own way often deeply melancholy, suggestive, and moving. ``Nothing bores me more than political novels and the literature of social intent, Nabokov said'' is followed by ``Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.'' Nabokov speaks for Markson's aesthetic aims, while Shakespeare synopsizes the personal wistfulness and deep sorrow permeating this remarkable book.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1996
ISBN: 1-56478-132-1
Page Count: 193
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
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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