A ruefully witty love story, more for dames than babes.
Chick-lit grows older and wiser.
Food writer Boorstin, author of Let Us Eat Cake (reviewed in the February 1, 2002, issue of Kirkus Reviews) serves up a concoction, more dessert than entrée, that exuberantly mixes the sweet things in life–love, friendship, family, and plenty of spice. Forty-nine year old narrator Miriam Levy is an L.A. wife, mother, and “with” cookbook author (“someone who enables the author to get the ‘By’ credit”). Her friend Kate, also 49, is divorced, rich, and unsettled. Eric, Kate’s first love, was the Swiss guide on the girls’ college trip to Europe in the ’70s. Of course, Kate, itching for adventure–i.e., a love affair for old times’ sake–Googles Eric, with resounding success: Naturally, he’s now the Swiss Ambassador to Malaysia, and–jackpot!–he’s never forgotten her. Steamy e-mails ensue, itchy condition worsens, and Kate’s off to Kuala Lumpur, attempting to drag along the always cautious, very reluctant Miriam, as support and partner-in-midlife-antics. Miriam remains stalwart in her refusal until her eldest daughter, a TV reporter, announces she’s pregnant and expects Miriam to raise the baby; Miriam’s aging mother, who lives in Buffalo, wants to move in; and failed screenwriter husband Alan continues to ignore her. Miriam’s soon on the plane. In Malaysia, attempted assault, a kidnapping, and other zany adventures the two women face hit the picaresque high marks, avoiding, in true chick-lit fashion, somber reminders of life’s real dangers. Kate finally hooks up with Eric, as his suspicious, pesky, dumpy wife mills about. And Miriam is wooed by Vijay, a rich Indian doctor she met on the plane. A widower, Vijay proposes marriage to a very tempted Miriam. (Alan, remember, isn’t the fun fellow he used to be.) The twists, turns, and revelations of life and love pile wisdom on top of wisdom and leave Kate and Miriam waxing wistful. Though “inspired by a true incident . . . involving Boorstin and one of her best friends,” this is an adult fairy tale (albeit with very real recipes). Happy endings may just be in the works.
A ruefully witty love story, more for dames than babes.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58348-233-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
