One of the great Latin American novels, in an exemplary translation. Not to be missed.
Moral weakness and political collusion are the subtly developed themes of this terse 2000 novel, a first US publication for the late, great Chilean author (1953–2003).
It consists of a nightlong deathbed monologue, presented in a single run-on paragraph, as spoken by Sebastién Urrutia Lacroix, a Chilean Jesuit priest also well known as a poet and literary critic. Father Lacroix’s hurtling memories begin with a lengthy account of his weekend visit, as a young seminarian, to the estate of eminent (and probably homosexual) critic Gonzalez Lamarca, a.k.a. “Farewell”—where the hopeful cleric is privileged to glimpse native poet Pablo Neruda “reciting verses to the moon,” and even converse with the great man. Subsequent memories describe Lacroix’s acquaintance with novelist-diplomat Don Salvador Reyes, himself a friend of German novelist (and WWII Wehrmacht officer) Ernst Juenger, Lacroix’s history of publications and of travels under the auspices of the Catholic charitable works program Opus Dei—all shadowed by an unidentified “wizened youth” who seems to be the priest’s sworn adversary and nemesis. We then learn of Lacroix’s employment by sinister entrepreneurs Raef and Etah (whose surnames, reversed, spell “Fear” and “Hate”)—first to “write a report on the preservation of [European] churches,” then to instruct revolutionary General Augusto Pinochet and members of his junta in the principles of Marxism (a stunningly detailed sequence). Finally, Lacroix recalls soirées at the lavish home of novelist-socialite Maria Canales, whose American husband lends his basement for the imprisonment and torture of “subversives.” This unusual fiction builds a devastating indictment of aesthetic withdrawal from moral responsibility out of Lacroix’s increasingly despairing reminiscences, which deftly incorporate references to the biblical Judas Tree (where Christ’s betrayer hanged himself) and the quisling-like poet-“patriot” Sordello, a victim of Dante’s Inferno. And, in the chilling conclusion, we learn the identity of the “wizened youth.”
One of the great Latin American novels, in an exemplary translation. Not to be missed.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2003
ISBN: 0-8112-1547-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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