Rich in local color and history, yet never quite reaches an affecting emotional pitch.
From Ethiopian-born memoirist Nega (Notes from the Hyena’s Belly, 2000): a first novel about star-crossed lovers that’s also a tart fictional history of Ethiopia in the twilight years of its ancient feudal kingdom, soon to be coveted by Europeans.
Mezlekia’s tale of forbidden love in unsettled times is replete with the retelling of old legends and acts of magical realism. Spirits appear in whirls of dust, creatures like the Abettors decide wars, and magical potions revive the dying. The tone, though, is often ironic and the observations contemporary as Nega describes germ warfare and weapons similar to missiles, as well as a fanatical priest bent on rooting out heresy. Luminously evoking a country where drought is endemic, the landscape austere, and food in short supply, the narrator, a warrior, Teferi—“the feared one”—relates the consequences of the birth of Aster, a daughter, to Count Ashenafi. Aster is an exceptional child who is tutored by the kingdom’s best scholars and guarded jealously by her protective father, but in her teens, even so, she falls in love with court comedian and jester, the clever slave, young Gudu. The two start writing a book, but their relationship is discovered and Gudu must leave the court. This love story is played out against a background of battles and ruthless regimes as the fanatical priest Reverend Yimam starts an inquisition to root out heresy in the court. While Aster dreams of escaping to join Gudu, he himself joins a band of rebels intent on defeating Yimam. The entire country is soon a battlefield as cities are besieged and sacked, and treachery is everywhere as fighters change sides and Gudu is taken prisoner—and tortured. When her father tries to stop Aster from going to Gudu’s aid, she finds a way out that even he is powerless to prevent.
Rich in local color and history, yet never quite reaches an affecting emotional pitch.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28701-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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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