Mad, raving old men with elegant pasts can make lunacy worth listening to—like a Shakespearean king or Mr. Gardner's Agathon, a self-styled seer holding forth at the time of the ascendance of Sparta. Again as in his Resurrection (1966) Mr. Gardner is concerned with rummaging among the meatier matters of human existence—the nature of reality, the relation of the individual to the scheme of things, the meaning of it all. His philosopher is rimey old Agathon orating to his likable, despairing, unstrung young disciple, Demodokos, who more or less against his will had followed his master into prison. In a kind of suspension amid the rats and refuse (one never learns the exact nature of his crime) the old man, with cheerful obscenities, flashes of brilliant wit and dreams, remembers and instructs his reluctant pupil. Before his assumed "idiocy" Agathon had stumbled through a life of some deceit, the love of two women, cruelty and betrayal. In repressive Sparta he had listened to the capricious wisdom of Solon and had been an indifferent adviser to the Spartan ruler Lykourgos. But the deaths of friends, wars and the warrior mentality had awakened him to the "monstrous foolishness of human beings," "the creative destruction" which is the law of the universe; and his own "Destiny"—in rags, filth and ancient antics—is simply to say "no." After a "rescue" and Agathon's death Demodokos begins to understand that, as he had said earlier, "People make too much of hate" Although distended with cerebration, the narrative offers some fine flights of inventive garrulity. Impressive thoughts on important concerns, but not always succeeding on fictional terms.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1970
ISBN: 052548180X
Page Count: 243
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1970
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.
