This adventurous, high-spirited writer is almost always forgotten when prize nominations are announced. The prize-givers...
West’s unparalleled chronological and thematic range is extended still further in his ambitious twentieth novel, set in ancient Egypt during the time (c. 2700 b.c.) of its Fourth Dynasty.
In a tactic reminiscent (and worthy) of Gore Vidal, West sends Greek historian Herodotus back in time to interview the aging pharaoh Cheops, as the latter arranges his own immortality by ordering construction of the great pyramids at Giza. “Herr Rodotus,” as he’s misidentified, is greeted by God of the Nile (and, presumably, doorman) Osiris, whose own tart comments alternate with those voiced by the pharaoh’s family and retinue. But Cheops and Herodotus dominate the story’s foreground, bonding cautiously, twitting each other slyly about the merits and failings of their respective civilizations, and debating Cheops’s insistence that he can feel himself becoming a god. Rudiments of a plot emerge through the (heavy, though not oppressive) miasma of rhetoric: the disappearance of Cheops’s (perhaps incestuously inclined) son Ka-wab; the balancing acts performed by his favored daughter Heduanna (educated as a scribe; ever one step ahead of the men who intend to appropriate her); and the wily marital and maternal maneuverings of Cheops’s wife (and, formerly, his father’s wife) Merytytes, who knows only too well how females may survive (“Woman must ever expect to marry her father, sleep with her brother, be the constant target of uncles and nephews”). What impresses most, however, is West’s gorgeously stylized re-creation (obviously carefully researched and, more importantly, vividly imagined) of a surpassingly strange vanished culture. This is most wittily accomplished through the declarations of Cheops and his inferiors, and in (often hilarious) illustrations of Herodotus’s well-known penchant for lurid exaggeration.
This adventurous, high-spirited writer is almost always forgotten when prize nominations are announced. The prize-givers might well note that an indisputably major oeuvre is taking shape right before their eyes.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2002
ISBN: 0-8112-1519-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
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 deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 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.
