Longer on wisdom than either surprise or delight, this will mainly interest readers who have been captivated by Keilson’s...
The first American publication of this 1947 novella accompanies the reissue of the German author’s The Death of the Adversary.
When the latter novel was translated for American publication in 1962, it received considerable acclaim for its illumination of emotional ambiguity during the rise to power of an unnamed Hitler. This shorter, slighter work by Keilson, a psychoanalyst who fled to the Netherlands in 1936 (and celebrated his 100th birthday last year), shares certain qualities with his masterwork, in its depiction of everyday detail and ritual against a backdrop—largely offstage—of unthinkable evil. Yet this is plainly minor work in comparison, not nearly as provocative nor as psychologically acute. A Dutch couple harbors a refugee for a year, keeping his existence as much of a secret as they can. Yet Nico, their secret upstairs housemate, may have some secrets of his own that he’s keeping from them. The dynamic among them shifts subtly over the year that he spends with them: “It stood like a wall between him and them, which slowly, slowly crumbled as the war dragged on and everything out of the ordinary and inhuman became typical and everyday.” One of the things that changes is the state of Nico’s health, which threatens to compromise the secret of his existence, and which ultimately results in a role reversal that represents whatever comedy there might be in this mirthless narrative. “He had defended himself against death from without, and then it had carried him off from within,” writes the author. “It was like a comedy where you expect the hero to emerge onstage, bringing resolution, from the right. And out he comes from the left...Later, though, the audience members go home surprised, delighted, and a little bit wiser for the experience.”
Longer on wisdom than either surprise or delight, this will mainly interest readers who have been captivated by Keilson’s better work.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-12675-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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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