An auspicious debut that blends a number of disparate-seeming tones into something surprisingly coherent—and moving.
Ferguson’s playful debut novel mixes a coming-of-age story with time travel.
“I feel like I should be changing,” 19-year-old Val says. Henry, her high school boyfriend, no longer seems like enough, so she ditches him and his best friend, Gabe, for life at NYU. Soon after, Henry disappears, leaving Gabe to search for him and also to reconcile his latent feelings for Val. But Ferguson doesn’t keep Henry’s whereabouts a secret: He's been abducted by older versions of himself—one at 80, one at 41. Henry can travel through time, see, and his older versions want to help him avoid mistakes, even if it means altering their own realities. Sound confusing, like a Charlie Kaufman–esque head trip? This plot summary makes the novel seem more difficult than it is. As Henry moves through time, Gabe and Val remain in place, and Ferguson gives equal weight to each point of view. In other words, though Henry’s story may be tricky, Ferguson never strays far from the anchor of the other two characters, a neat narrative maneuver that makes the novel not as confusing as it should be. Despite all the time travel, Ferguson’s core is a coming-of-age tale that takes the form of a love triangle; remove the fantasy, and you have a novel as old-fashioned as Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot (2011). But that’s not a bad thing—Ferguson never stresses the weirdness of his construction, focusing instead on convincingly realistic details so that even the surrealism seems earthbound. The novel never quite reaches the conclusion it deserves—Ferguson opts for mezzo piano when fortissimo would’ve been best—but no matter: This book, like good music, will sweep you up.
An auspicious debut that blends a number of disparate-seeming tones into something surprisingly coherent—and moving.Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-32399-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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.
