Clarke uses a modern idiom that’s sometimes jarring (“Hera hissed, ‘Don’t you dare take any notice of that mindless bitch’...
Whitbread-winner Clarke (The Chymical Wedding, 1989, etc.) offers a fresh and lively retelling of the Trojan War: a kind of ur-text of the events that made Homer famous.
Peleus and Thetis provide a good example of the most dangerous part of planning a wedding: the guest list. They blackball Eris, the Goddess of Discord, who takes her revenge by tossing a golden apple marked “To the Fairest” into the banquet hall. Naturally, Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite all go ballistic and turn to Zeus to settle the dispute—which he does by passing the buck to Paris, the most beautiful man in the world, and asking him to judge. By choosing Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, Paris earns the hand of Helen, the most beautiful woman alive—and that’s where all hell breaks loose. Helen is the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, who flies into a royal rage when Paris abducts his bride to Troy. Menelaus invokes a prenuptial agreement he’d made with all of Helen’s prior suitors (who had agreed in advance to support whomever she chooses to wed), and the whole of Greece goes to war against Troy. You probably remember the story, with all the familiar characters here: the noble warriors Hector, Achilles, and Patroclus; the kings Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Laomedon; the wily Odysseus; and the resourceful Aeneas. We get as far as Odysseus’s breach of the walls of Troy with his wooden horse, although the narrator (a certain Phemius of Ithaca) lets us know that he was present at the hero’s homecoming—so a sequel is probably in the offing.
Clarke uses a modern idiom that’s sometimes jarring (“Hera hissed, ‘Don’t you dare take any notice of that mindless bitch’ ”) but never ridiculous, and he manages to keep the large cast of characters from stumbling all over each other on the page—more than can be said for Homer.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-33657-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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