An uneven novel about a troubled woman.
In Mosier’s debut novel, a young man and woman find unlikely love in New York City.
Tuli (“short for Tulip”) is a young Manhattan woman who works at a call center. She also, as the novel’s opening line states, gives “handjobs to strangers, but not for the usual reasons.” Unhappy, isolated and hopping from therapist to therapist, Tuli is drawn to handicapped or otherwise unusual men—but neither she nor they derive much pleasure from the relationships. Things begin to change, however, when Sam—a young disabled man working at his first job as a magazine intern—moves to her neighborhood. He meets Tuli at her regular coffee shop, and the two quickly hit it off. But it will take a lot more than some initial chemistry to break down Tuli’s emotional barriers, or to convince Sam that a relationship might be possible. Tuli must also deal with an exploitative man who’s pretending to be a therapist, frequent humiliation at work, and her pet fish, who narrates the story. Overall, it’s a recipe for a sometimes-sordid, sometimes-sentimental novel. Mosier has a pleasingly offbeat prose style, and his characters, from Sam and Tuli to the barista at their coffee shop hangout, are genuinely likable. The two leads’ early scenes together are particularly compelling. Unfortunately, the book is handicapped by a few crucial faults: The omniscient fish’s presence is baffling, particularly as he lusts after Tuli like the human men in her life do. (Must women be objectified even by the animals in their lives?) Many of the Manhattan-set details ring false; for example, Tuli at one point winds up on a farm while on a bender, and Sam is offered a free room to work as an intern at a poetry magazine. Also, Tuli’s job at a call center seems implausible after it’s revealed that she’s an heiress. Realism may not be Mosier’s goal, but the combination of these details may make it difficult for readers to truly empathize with the characters and fully engage with the narrative.
An uneven novel about a troubled woman.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1505284317
Page Count: 220
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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