Wex's humorous writing is crisp. Note: There's a lot of Yiddish threaded through the story, so the glossary at the back of...
A fish-out-of-water tale of an outcast adolescent growing up in exile out in the Canadian wilderness.
Diaspora doesn’t generally lend itself to comedy, but it works pretty well in this distinctly Jewish coming-of-age novel by Wex (The Frumkiss Family Business, 2011, etc.). It concerns Yoine Levkes, a teen growing up in the desolation of Coalbanks, Alberta, post–World War II. Like many young people, he finds himself caught between the religious solemnity of his parents and the natural impulses of growing up. And like smart young people in his situation, he’s painfully aware of the limitations of his situation. “If only Tradition had barfed me forth onto the dry sands of Western civilization, I could have grown into a big shot, a contender; a stammering, nattering, chest-pulling Jewish intellectual with nothing on my mind but social justice and yellow-pubed shiksas, the hero of a thousand novels,” he muses. Acting as our narrator, Yoine is smart—smarter, really, than a character of his age and demeanor has any right to be, but it’s his quick-witted running commentary that carries the novel more than its minimal plot. However, Wex does excel at building incongruous characters who demonstrate the counterintuitive complexities of Jewish life—the radical poet who publishes pornography for gentiles to fuel his agenda is just one highlight. “I get fathers coming to see me with pictures of their daughters shtupping horses, and this is at least eighty percent of the population—and I use their money to exalt, to try to keep alive the only culture in the world that knows from good and evil, from life and death, and from life that’s worse than death.” But even a death in the family brings no gravity to this feathery story, as Yoine’s goals consist mostly of getting into the pants of girlfriend Sabina Mandelbroit.
Wex's humorous writing is crisp. Note: There's a lot of Yiddish threaded through the story, so the glossary at the back of the book may prove helpful.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-312-36463-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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
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