Grim and measured, sure of its emotional power, this is certainly evidence of Brennan’s great gift, but the story’s too...
Riding a wave of rediscovery, long-time New Yorker writer Brennan (The Rose Garden, 1999, etc.) has been no more highly touted than now, seven years after her death at age 76. This novella, though, dating from the ’40s and found in a university archive, will not add measurably to her reputation.
In the cold heart of Dublin’s fair city dwells Anastasia King’s paternal grandmother, whom she has come to live with after her mother’s death in Paris. But Anastasia finds her visit to Ireland a chilling one, and it’s not because of the damp weather. Her mother had taken her and run away from her father years before, leaving him to plead for their return to no avail, and then to die. Grandmother has neither forgotten nor forgiven, even though Anastasia was only 16 then; now, at 22, she’s devastated by the news that she’s not welcome as a permanent guest in the house where she lived as a child. She tries to soften Grandmother’s heart, going to Midnight Mass on Christmas and spending freely on presents for both the old woman and her long-time housekeeper, whom she knew from before, but whatever tenderness she imagines quickly turns to stone when Anastasia suggests that her mother be brought back from Paris and buried next to her father. When she flees to a church to console herself, she’s booted out for not having a hat on, and from there it’s only a matter of time before she’s packing her bags again. In the end she shows that she’s her mother’s daughter after all, but there’s little comfort to be derived from her small acts of defiance.
Grim and measured, sure of its emotional power, this is certainly evidence of Brennan’s great gift, but the story’s too slight to stand alone.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2000
ISBN: 1-58243-083-7
Page Count: 94
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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
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
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