A humorous, if imperfect novel built of ancient ideas.
A retired Zeus inhabits modern Los Angeles in Anastas’ debut comic novel.
Zeus—yes, that Zeus, the king of the Greek gods—lives in the hills above Los Angeles. He’s in the midst of a midlife crisis (not his first) because his girlfriend, Greta, a beautiful tenured professor, has just proposed to him. “I admit, I am not one-hundred percent sure this will translate into forever with you,” she says, “but I want to give forever a try.” Well, forever means something quite different to Zeus than it does to Greta: Even though he put aside his powers long ago, he’s still an immortal who’s been alive for millennia. She, of course, has no idea of his real identity or his literal antiquity. He requests some time to think about it and to consult with some of his confidants. These include Yorgo, his right-hand man and the sole person who knows exactly who Zeus is, and his 20-something son, Perry, who Zeus fears might turn out to be immortal as well. As Zeus thinks back on his life—he’s had some experiences, including playing a role in early humanity very similar to that of Adam and meeting people like Socrates, George Washington, and Picasso—he ponders a way forward. Then an ancient enemy from his past shows up in town, and she may end up making Zeus’ decision moot. In Anastas’ hands, Zeus’ narration is light and amusing, mixing the topography of modern Los Angeles with a winking view of Greek history. Here Zeus describes the neighborhood of Westwood: “There are some strip malls south of campus that look a little like Oklahoma City, but they have a new-found vibrancy brought in by the Persians. I’ve long since made peace with them, by the way.” The book is a bit hokey at times, but the author actually raises some prescient questions about the dangers of power—both the democratic and authoritarian kind—and how important it is for leaders to be willing to give it up. Readers will enjoy Anastas’ irreverent take on mythology, his loving depiction of LA, and his subtle interrogation of the West’s democratic heritage.
A humorous, if imperfect novel built of ancient ideas.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5439-9481-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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