Probably the most enjoyable comic novel since Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. A certifiable hoot.
If you don’t laugh yourself sick over this gloriously absurd new novel from the author of 1994’s Louisiana Power & Light (to which it’s a partial sequel), you’re probably just plain unentertainable.
It’s Dufresne’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set in the Louisiana swamp country, where the inhabitants of Shiver-de-Freeze (a place-name mangled from the original French) are getting themselves ready for the wedding of Ariane Thevenot and Grisham Loudermilk. Things get complicated right away, because devilishly handsome Grisham can’t deny himself one more fling (if not several) with former girlfriend Miranda Ferry (who works as a “chicken-sexer”: don’t ask), and Ariane can’t resist the adoration of impulsive Adlai Birdsong. Meanwhile, good-looking widow Earlene Fontana considers the attentions of morose Varden Roebuck, occasionally thinking to fret about her precocious 11-year-old Boudou, who can’t decide whether to deliver up his superhuman memory for scrutiny at a nearby scientific institute, or his virginity to the female “conjoined” twins known as “Tous-les-Deux,” who have eyes (and other shared body parts) for him. These are all basically likable folks: not just the aforementioned, but even hypocritical souls like sex-obsessed Father Pat and born-again Durwood Tulliver and hellfire-and-damnation preacher Alvin Lee Loudermilk, as well as miscellaneous gossips and rednecks and snake-handlers. Grisham and Ariane do swap vows, and their ceremonials include the performance of a hilariously deranged playlet, Evangeline, as Performed by the Mechanics of Shiver-de-freeze (oh, and there’s a werewolf in it). And when Dufresne wraps everything up, the metafictionist in him (who’s been chatting with the reader at odd intervals throughout the book) takes several peeks at his characters’ futures, in a garrulous Epilogue and a mock-scholarly Appendix. You’ll be pleased to hear that Boudou’s formidable brains get put to good use.
Probably the most enjoyable comic novel since Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. A certifiable hoot.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-02020-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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