A mature, intelligent and unusually perceptive study of the paradoxes of belonging to others, and being oneself—Eberstadt’s...
The travels of two intrepid youngsters become an unlikely journey to maturity in this engaging fifth novel from the London-based American author (The Furies, 2003 etc.).
In its primary narrative, we’re introduced to 15-year-old Celia Bonnet, affectionately dubbed “Rat” by her beautiful, wayward mother Vanessa, with whom she lives in the French Pyrénnées near the Spanish border, where Vanessa makes a living as a brocanteur working the open markets (“She buys and sells old goods”). Bonding with a friend her age (Jérôme) and a younger orphan (Morgan) adopted by the impulsive Vanessa, Rat lives an essentially outdoor, unstructured life, pumping her mom for information about the stranger who fathered her—London artist Gillem McKane, the son of famous fashion model Celia Kidd. When Vanessa’s live-in lover Thierry proves himself alarmingly unworthy of her (or anyone’s) affections, Rat and Morgan strike out for London. When this strongly imagined novel sticks closely to Rat’s brash, stoical viewpoint, it’s riveting. But when, halfway through the narrative, her experiences and perceptions are juxtaposed with those of the reintroduced Gillem, the story briefly loses conviction. Gillem’s morose fatalism, which inspires his envisioning of the Iraq War in an ambitious modern Bayeux Tapestry, is never fully credible. Parallels and contrasts to Rat’s busy imagination are nicely handled, but it’s only when Rat and he force themselves to connect, tell their separate truths and risk both the creation and the loss of intimacy, that the book comes fully alive. When Rat realizes that Vanessa needs her more than she herself needs a father, the pieces fall beautifully, movingly into place.
A mature, intelligent and unusually perceptive study of the paradoxes of belonging to others, and being oneself—Eberstadt’s best novel yet.Pub Date: April 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-27183-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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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