Energetic, vivid—and unconvincing: Mom is just too much
Powerfully written if narratively undercharged debut is more a portrait of a monstrous fictional Mommie Dearest (by a remarkably forgiving daughter) than a compelling story of alienation and understanding.
Like many contemporary writers, Stansbury gets the details right, but the characters, however outrageously they behave, seem more concepts-in-costume. The storyline is equally undernourished. The narrator, younger daughter Lucy Taylor, begins her reminisces of life with Mom when still in grade school, as the family's trailer goes off the road en route to Utah, where they are to live Her mother Miriam didn't want to leave California and their home , the picturesque “House on the Hill,” but her father Bob suspected Miriam might have been seeing other men. An understandable fear since Miriam,, self-centered and impulsive, is a Mom who likes to walk on the wild side. Lucy relates next how Miriam, deciding she has Mexican blood, calls herself “Juanita” and works at a local Mexican restaurant for a few days. She also flirts with Mormonism, reads Lucy's diary, and steals whatever she can from restaurants. Bob tries to please Miriam, but Miriam wants more than he can give her. The two divorce, which means Lucy and sister Jen must cope with Mom's lies, machinations, and moves. Miriam keeps moving from California to Alaska, where she ends up as she chases her dreams—as protean as her personality. In Alaska, she claims to have Tlingit blood; follows her unsuitable lovers—two of whom she marries—while along the way getting her Master’s and, incredibly, becoming a psychologist. Lucy, who loves Dad and the orderly life he lives, resents Mom's tastes (ketchup is her vegetable of choice) and her behavior. Still, the now grown-up Lucy, whose own life has been difficult, is amazingly grateful for Mom's zest for living and the lessons she taught her about life.
Energetic, vivid—and unconvincing: Mom is just too muchPub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0978-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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.
