As can happen in philosophically inclined science fiction, the issues are more fully explored than the characters; but when...
Set in 2022, this impressive first novel by nonfiction author Hoffman (Shtetl, 1997, etc.) sketches a creepily plausible near-future in which her protagonist experiences a very 21st-century identity crisis.
The title is deliberately misleading. The real, “all-too-human secret” will not be fully understood until the story’s fnal pages. Hoffman expertly inserts enough clues for readers to guess the putative secret regarding narrator Iris Surrey’s birth shortly before she does it on page 60: Iris isn’t just Elizabeth Surrey’s daughter, but her mother’s clone. Finally understanding the reason for “The Weirdness,” the preternatural closeness that always set them apart in the midwestern college town where her mother raised her, Iris flees to Elizabeth’s native New York City, whose actual streets are subtly different from the Virtuals she viewed in school: “there were elements of surprise in the actual.” The grandparents she’s never met have moved from the Park Avenue address she found on old letters, so she takes up with Piotr, who can help her break into a classified e-mail address to locate them. Meanwhile, she watches organic artists reshaping actual animals using computer implants; visits a virtual club, where people use memory-chips to give themselves invented identities for a few hours; attends a debate on “Whither Human Design?”; and tries Piotr’s Affect Simulator, which allows users to acquire specific emotions at particular intensities. Hoffman gradually and subtly makes the point that although Iris may feel especially unreal due to her origins (her birth in 2005 was one of the first human clonings), she lives in a world where “reality” is virtual as often as physical. Yet the cautiously optimistic ending suggests that authentic identity and experiences are still attainable.
As can happen in philosophically inclined science fiction, the issues are more fully explored than the characters; but when those issues include the nature of reality and the location of the human soul, it’s not such a drawback.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-58648-150-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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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