A psychologically astute, skillful, engrossing and satisfying novel.
A Detroit boy is sent to stay with his grandparents in rural 1950s Appalachia in this debut literary novel with touches of magical realism.
Nine-year-old Orbie Ray is “a handful” according to his stepfather, Victor. That’s why he has to stay with his grandparents in Kentucky while the rest of the family drives down to Florida, where Victor has a job opportunity. Everything in Harlan’s Crossroads is so different from Detroit—not just the bluegrass and tobacco farms, but also the race relations. Orbie grew up believing that “colored” kids jumped you in the schoolyard and that a black man caused the accident that killed his father. However, in Kentucky, he notices that white folks are often scarier—such as Old Man Harlan, who charges too much at his store, or Bird Pruitt, Harlan’s disturbing hunchback cousin. He also meets Moses Mashbone, a half Choctaw, half black snake handler and medicine man who saved Granpaw’s life; as a result, Granny won’t allow Orbie to say the N-word. Orbie can’t find anyone to play with, so he overcomes his fears and makes friends with Willis, a “little colored boy Moses takes care of.” Willis has a stutter and clubfoot, but he also sings and draws pictures. The story of how Victor courted Orbie’s mother unfolds in flashback, alternating with scenes of Orbie’s story, as he finds himself confronting powerful forces—race, family, nature and even something supernatural. In his debut novel, Owens captures his characters’ folksy Appalachian diction without overdoing it and subtly reveals character through dialogue and description. He also renders a child’s viewpoint with great psychological sensitivity: “I didn’t like the way [Victor] was all the time trying to be on my mind. It was too close together somehow—like when Momma started talking about Jesus and wouldn’t shut up.” Moses and Willis are sometimes overly idealized, and readers may wish that the novel better explored the downsides of snake-handling churches. Overall, however, readers will find this an impressive debut.
A psychologically astute, skillful, engrossing and satisfying novel.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475084498
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Blind Sight Publications
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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