A blunt, effective debut.
A debut novel about war, writing, and the mutability of facts.
Nearly everybody in this book is lying. An author seems to be lying about his war memoir. The media seems to be lying about the Iraq War. Young New York intellectuals seem to be lying about how much they care about soldiers. It’s a kaleidoscope of dishonesty in America, and Bennett’s novel tries to shoulder it all. “What is the morality or immorality,” a narrator wonders, “of pretending to be something you’re not around people pretending to be something they’re not?” The plot is ambitious: in one storyline, soldiers in Iraq find themselves pawns in the larger political game. In another storyline, a young man comes of age wanting to be a writer and nursing unrequited love for his cousin. When, midway through, Bennett swings to a young woman’s experience in an MFA program, you understand the range of this novel's interests. Bennett, best known for some prickly essays about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, makes a strong case for himself as a novelist here. Nevertheless, one senses a writer trying a little too hard to write a big, important statement about America—something that will stand the test of time. Will some be put off by this brash eagerness? No doubt. On the other hand, it’s a quirk to admire: Bennett knows this is his moment, and he wants to put everything in. American imperialism? Check. American racism? Check. The mendacity of the media? Yup. Adolescence and unrequited love? It’s there. The disappointment of success? You know it. The creative writing workshop experience? You get the idea. And Bennett’s ambition certainly isn’t dishonorable, even if it makes the novel a touch chaotic.
A blunt, effective debut.Pub Date: June 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8101-3121-7
Page Count: 264
Publisher: TriQuarterly/Northwestern Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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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