Any war deserves a better novel than this one.
The war in Iraq tears an American family apart, in a novel that suffers from cultural stereotypes, political polemics and a strange depiction of the afterlife.
Todd Ogden is a painter of some repute and insufferable self-absorption. He came of age during the free-loving ’60s and seduced his wife, Sarah, on their first meeting. She is a member of an established, wealthy New England family, the kind that donates heavily to private schools and has buildings named after them, and her marriage to Todd was seen as a sign of radical rebellion. Sarah and Todd have encouraged their two offspring, Amanda and Jack, to be equally free-spirited, but Jack attempts to exercise his independence by enlisting in the Marines instead of accepting early admission to Harvard. Todd responds in a manner that is exaggeratedly boorish, all but disowning his son, while displaying a class-conscious snobbishness that extends to Jack’s new girlfriend. Jessica’s innate goodness matches her beauty, but she hasn’t lived the life of privilege that Jack now appears willing to throw away. As shuffled by Schaeffer (Zermatt, 2003, etc.), the voices of these five principal characters alternate in narrating chapters, with Jack proceeding through every boot-camp cliché without ever discovering much beyond affirmation for the selfless saintliness of his decision. Tragedy ensues, as do complications, leaving all of the survivors to come to terms with the unfathomable as best they can. Conveniently, Amanda works as an assistant on the letters-to-the-editor page of the New York Times, where most of her coworkers feel as little regard for the Marines as her father does. While bullheaded Todd belatedly tries to make amends and save his floundering marriage, Schaeffer injects the voice of a wisecracking God into the narrative, in a manner that religious liberals and conservatives might find equally offensive.
Any war deserves a better novel than this one.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-7867-1716-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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