This endless diorama of gods, graves and a scholar begins at the archaeological site of an American, Cullinan, at Makor (in old Hebrew- The Source). Michener, whose globe-trotting (Hawaii, Afghanistan, etc.) makes him a sort of Lowell Thomas of the novel, extends his reach and his grasp this time to include not only the country of Israel, but 11,800 years of its history and religion in sequences relating to some artifact at the site (a flint, a phial, a Menorah, a coin, etc.). These intervals are also opened up by prefatory scenes in the present called "The Tell" which deal with Cullinan, who is at Makor on a five year dig, and Vered Bar-El, and Israeli expert in dating pottery, "a dark haired lovely Jewess from Bible times." (He falls in love with her; she will not go against her faith to marry a non-Jew.) However 95% of the book turns from the excavation to a reconstruction affording a synoptic view of Judaism, its religion, history and culture. The various periods are subdivided into "Levels" which proceed from cave to kibbutz; from Ur, the hunter, down through the centuries; from the earliest gods— the trinity of El Shaddai, Baal and Astarte— to one god, Yahweh, and all the ritual and the laws coincident with what was to prove as indestructible a faith as a people; from prehistory through the Old and New Testaments, into medieval Europe, past the Inquisition and finally down to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Jews' moral rights to Israel, that "meeting place of dynamisms." Michener's Source prompts many basic questions: will his assiduous spadework and unquestionable sympathy meet an equivalent fortitude in a reader who is expecting a novel, which this is not? is dubbed in dialogue for the greatest story ever told a replacement for the Good Book which certainly said it better? how much of this can be assimilated in what is essentially a digest documentary presentation? Someone carped that Caravans was an "eighth grade geography lesson" and if so, this should take you through your achievement tests in religion, history and archaeology..... June Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Pub Date: May 24, 1965
ISBN: 0375760385
Page Count: 930
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1965
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
