Donatich manages to avoid clichés in what could have been another trendy defamation of the Catholic Church, for Father...
The title refers both to the Goldberg Variations and to “variations” in the priestly life of Father Dominic at Our Lady of Fatima.
Dominic has to adjust to the first variation after the death of his predecessor, Father Carl, a much-loved and wise old priest. Father Carl had looked out for Dolores, a troubled 16-year-old, both free-spirited and erratic, but Dominic hasn’t the light and loving touch of Father Carl, who saw Dolores as “one of God’s special cases, given us to know Him better." Dominic is instead simply bewildered by her wild, irrational outbursts. Meanwhile, Our Lady of Fatima is meeting the fate of many an aging urban Catholic church and is threatened with the wrecking ball, a move supported by the bishop but heroically (and quixotically) resisted by Dominic, who tries to drum up support through a lively blog on the Internet. Posting his thoughts and sermons online opens him up to considerable vilification, however, for he finds that there’s a great deal of hostility out there, much of it directed toward priests. Another narrative thread involves James, a talented young pianist taught by Signora Rosa, a septuagenarian piano teacher who gives her protégé cryptic, ethereal instructions in his approach to music. She persuades James to start writing a “biography” of the Goldberg Variations, a piece he feels an almost mystic attraction to. The paths of James and Dominic cross when the pianist becomes choir director at Our Lady of Fatima, and the narrative is further complicated when Dominic becomes romantically involved with Signora Rosa’s daughter Andrea, a divorcée with a 10-year-old daughter.
Donatich manages to avoid clichés in what could have been another trendy defamation of the Catholic Church, for Father Dominic emerges as a fully fleshed character, both tormented and lost.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9438-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: John Macrae/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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