Reminiscent of A.S. Byatt's Possession, though less lofty, Michaels's latest (Vanish With the Rose, etc.) sets a feminist literary scholar chasing after the origins of an 18th-century manuscript on a Virginia estate—and finding unexpected romance along the way. English professor Karen Holloway is thrilled to come upon a novel by a mysterious early American writer who identified herself only as ``Ismene.'' Karen had begun to make her academic reputation when she discovered and edited a book of Ismene's poetry. Now she recognizes the chance for a scholarly coup. She traces the provenance of the manuscript to an old, decrepit estate in Tidewater Virginia, owned by the handsome, melancholy Cameron Hayes, then takes an apartment in the neighboring town to use as base camp for her explorations. Karen is subjected to the nosy intrusions of her landlady, who ropes her into giving a talk to the local ladies' literary club—but the old woman gets more than she bargained for when Karen mischievously chooses as her topic ``The Pen as Penis.'' Meanwhile, other English professors have caught the scent of a literary discovery and converge upon the town hoping to beat Karen out in bringing to light Ismene's true identity. Quickly it becomes clear that this will be a gloves-off competition: Karen is attacked in her apartment, nearly run over, and stalked. Her search is also impeded by eerie supernatural events: every time she approaches an old stone bunker in the woods near the estate's main house, a disembodied scream rings out, scaring her witless. Adding to the suspense is a question: Will the bristly Karen allow herself to be won over by either of the two men vying for her affections- -the taciturn Cameron Hayes and the slick rival scholar Bill Meyers? It never gets the pulse pounding, but it's diverting—with a refreshingly intelligent and unstereotypical heroine.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 4-77001-736-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
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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