Although Goldschmidt gives him a distinctive, if repellent voice, Mordechai reports the events of his life in a deadening...
Dutch author Goldschmidt’s first novel, an attempt to fictionalize the history of a Dutch pharmaceutical company that survived World War II although it was owned by Jews, offers a less than savory view of business ethics.
Twin brothers Mordechai and Aaron De Paauw inherit the family butcher business in the early 1920s when they're only 27. Ambitious Mordechai is soon running things while mild-mannered, morally upright Aaron remains in the background. In 1923, Mordechai teams up with Rafaël Levine, a Jewish scientist from Germany, to found Farmacon, which will manufacture insulin from animal pancreas excretions. The partnership flourishes, making scientific discoveries and lots of money, although Mordechai chafes at Levine’s efforts to hire as many German-Jewish refugees as possible. Ironically, Mordechai marries Rivka, the daughter of one of the German scientists, who bears him four daughters and a son. Meanwhile, Mordechai, a self-styled ladies' man, enjoys summoning female employees to his office to “seduce” them and wonders at Aaron’s lack of sex drive. Without Levine’s knowledge, Mordechai arranges for his brother to test out the testosterone Farmacon has been developing. The result drives Aaron temporarily insane with lust, and he goes to prison in 1938 without divulging Mordechai’s culpability. As the Nazis arrive, Mordechai escapes Holland with his family although Rivka, having learned about Mordechai’s predatory sexual activities, ends their marriage. But Mordechai’s primary concern is Farmacon’s continuing growth even as the war rages and those he left behind suffer. Returning to the postwar Netherlands, he breaks with Levine because Levine’s German (though Jewish) background might hurt business. Rivka, Aaron and Levine have all become fodder for Mordechai’s greed. Even as an old man approaching death, he has no epiphany to leaven the reader’s perception that he is a narcissistic creep.
Although Goldschmidt gives him a distinctive, if repellent voice, Mordechai reports the events of his life in a deadening follow-the-dots style that does nothing to mitigate the novel’s simplistic portrayal of nobility versus capitalist evil.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59051-649-2
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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