In her early fiction, Oates often displayed a sharp talent for the texture and rhythm of psychological obsession—but this study of the feverish friendship between two women is unconvincing, thin and artificial, from start to finish. The novel is presented from the viewpoint of Monica Jensen, a 30-ish, fair, rather repressed sort who takes a teaching job at a private boys' school in rural Pennsylvania—largely in order to recover from her recent bad-marriage, which has left physical scars (an abortion, a small facial scar from a fight) as well as emotional ones. But soon Monica meets her temperamental opposite: dark, artistic, sensual, hedonistic Sheila Trask, 42—a semi-famous painter, widow of a famous sculptor, a local landowner. And immediately Monica feels,"the tug of a powerful attraction," elated when Sheila seems to take an interest in her: "Monica knew secretly that her capacity for love—for love and what is meant by 'passion'—was deficient set beside Sheila Trask's". . . while Sheila seems equally awed by Monica's good-natured, competent, "blond optimism." The women begin talking together regularly; Monica dotes on Sheila's visits, gawks over Sheila's artistic talent; she even tags along when Sheila dons working-class disguise to engage in bar-and-grill flirtations with truckers. (The novel catches fire briefly here.) The friendship quickly sours, however—as the other side of Sheila's artistic soul emerges: combative, insecure, alcoholic, suicidal. Monica breaks away, reenters the safe, superficial world she lived in before. But something is missing—and when a needy Sheila makes a bid to rekindle the relationship, Monica eagerly agrees, but on new terms. "Now she would be cautious—she would be in control," as Monica becomes Sheila's indispensable confidant/helpmeet and the friendship edges toward open eroticism. . . but then plunges Monica into a nightmare of rape, illness, and self-exposure. Neither of the women here is credibly drawn; nor are they persuasive as polar "types." And Oates' prose belabors each point repetitiously—making this often read like a heavily padded short story. Mildly intriguing at the start, then increasingly murky and tiresome.
Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1984
ISBN: 0865381003
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1984
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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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