Thoroughly captivating: the whole medieval panorama re-achieved by a modern, with all the atmosphere of the old.
The erudite and entertaining Ackroyd brings 1380s London to life all over again, with many a nod to The Canterbury Tales.
Chaucer set his people on the road, but there’s no actual pilgrimage in Ackroyd (The Plato Papers, 2000, etc.), whose characters pretty much stay in London. The Canterbury pilgrims do appear again, by name and vocation, though noting the differences between Chaucer’s characters and Ackroyd’s can be as much fun as crediting the similarities. Once again, they’re hardly a fault-free lot, though Ackroyd throws us a curve or two—his Physician is good through and through, his Pardoner hardly so bad a guy, and, unlike Chaucer’s saintly Clerk, Ackroyd’s is up for skullduggery indeed. What binds the tales together (aside from the much shared humanity in the close confines of a medieval city) is, not surprisingly, politics. Readers of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays will be right at home: the tales here are told over exactly the same time as Henry Bolingbroke returns from France to reclaim the throne and depose (and then worse) Richard II. In fact, much of Ackroyd’s drama is generated through the machinations of a radically religious secret pro-Bolingbroke cell led by the truly monstrous William Exmewe (the Friar), whose belief as a so-called “predestined man” is that nothing one does for the good cause can be a sin—and readers will learn soon enough what Exmewe is capable of doing, as will Thomas Gunter (the Physician), Miles Vavasour (the Man of Law), and others. As the political crisis deepens, so does the threat to one of the cloistered nuns, Clarice, who, thought to be mad, emits prophetic utterances that displease the Prioress, stir up the townspeople, and most severely anger the king’s protectors. There will be arrests, interrogations, and worse before stability returns.
Thoroughly captivating: the whole medieval panorama re-achieved by a modern, with all the atmosphere of the old.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-51121-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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