A novel that veers out of control, obliterating its setup and dulling Ammaniti’s admired edge as a satirist.
In contemporary Rome, a satanic caper implodes in this latest from the well-regarded Italian (Me and You, 2012, etc.).
When is a satanic sect no longer a sect? When it’s down to three losers and an uncharismatic leader. The Wilde Beasts of Abaddon would accept that harsh judgment. The four Romans are dejected and spiritless. Other disciples have quit. When they sacrificed a student and buried her alive, she dug her way out; then Silvietta became the girlfriend of Murder, another acolyte (Stockholm syndrome?). Their leader, Saverio, blames himself for their troubles. Henpecked by his wife, humiliated by his father-in-law (he manages his furniture store), he needs a release for his submerged hate. Then an opportunity arrives. The celebrity singer Larita, a convert to Christianity from Satanism, is the star attraction at an event where the Beasts will be moonlighting. They’ll behead her with the sword Saverio’s bought on eBay and then kill themselves. Their deliberations need a light touch which Ammaniti doesn’t quite achieve. Nor is it helpful that he develops a parallel storyline about the best-selling novelist Fabrizio Ciba. An unappealing narcissist with writer’s block, Fabrizio reflects Italian publishing’s fierce infighting but adds little to the mix. The storylines converge at a spectacular event organized by Chiatti, a real estate mogul and avatar of relentless vulgarity. He has bought one of Rome’s oldest parks to stage not just Larita’s concert, but three separate hunts (fox, tiger and lion). The Beasts’ silly scheme dissolves in squabbling over the suicide pact and, anyway, is overshadowed by the ruckus of the hunts. Fabrizio and Larita are thrown off an elephant; an art dealer is eaten by crocodiles; and in a surreal twist, defecting Soviet athletes and their subhuman spawn, living in the catacombs since the 1960 Rome Olympics, emerge to wreak havoc.
A novel that veers out of control, obliterating its setup and dulling Ammaniti’s admired edge as a satirist.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2111-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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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