Lots of lists, footnoted comments on the action, and not very funny screenplay-style dialogue: all of them bits and pieces...
Labored debut offering a step-by-step guide to planning a wedding and losing your mind.
Stephen pops the question while waiting in line for movie theater snacks. Amy say yes to him, no to nachos, and swings into action. No pastel bridesmaid gowns for this hip, sophisticated New Yorker. She’s a fast-rising editor at a serious newsmagazine and not easily flustered. The amazing secret to her success: lists! So she starts her latest and greatest to-do countdown with enthusiasm, although she’s never been involved in preparing a wedding before. First, everything has to be discussed over and over with her girlfriends and family, because it all costs so much and it’s all so incredibly complicated. The inevitable squabbles ensue on account of Amy being so totally nervous and everything. Yes, she wants to marry Stephen, even though he’s obsessed with sports to the point where he’s delighted with her gag gift: the history of basketball printed on toilet paper. Still, he likes four out of five of her favorite things: laughing, eating, reading, and sex. (Not shopping.) He’ll do. Amy can’t believe she’s acting just like every other dopey bride-to-be, obsessing—with the expensive help of a wedding planner—over centerpieces and invitations and bands. She’s dreaming about sauna sex with strangers . . . is it possible that she’s not ready to get married? There are other important questions. Why did her beleaguered secretary quit when Amy needed her most? Can her proud parents possibly be coaxed to spend more money? Is the right Upper East Side church available? Will her nutty grandma ever calm down? Her mother’s ghastly wedding dress fits perfectly, but must she wear it? And ohmigod, what about shoes? Somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, Stephen sensibly disappears. Will he come back?
Lots of lists, footnoted comments on the action, and not very funny screenplay-style dialogue: all of them bits and pieces that don’t add up to much.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-33583-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Delta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
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.
