Probably few people would question that Nabokov is the greatest living writer and he reached his apogee with Pale Fire and Lolita. This new novel, his first in ten years, intended to deal with the problem of time which has always been a paramount concern and preceded by much intimidating advance commentary, is pure Nabokov. All his readers will recognize the particular specifics of his apparatus. That is if they get past the opening chapters with their impedimenta which Nabokov himself recognizes ("The modest narrator has to remind the rereader of all this"). Rereading entails not only impenetrable sentences but also the entangling introduction of characters: two sisters Aqua and Marina (a portmanteau name) who marry two cousins of the same name, namely Walter D. Veen with alternate appellations (Demian or Dementius or Demon). Their progeny, that is Marina's, will be the central characters of the book: Van Veen who is presumably Aqua's child (Aqua dies with the delusion-allusion that he is not hers as indeed he isn't) and Marina's two legitimate little girls, Ada (Ardor if pronounced in Russian) and Lucette. This takes place in the kingdom of Terra (America) and more specifically on the family estate, Ardis, where the "romantic siblings" Van and Ada enjoy each other immoderately as youngsters. A little later they will be joined by the lewd Lucette, a paranymph, but in spite of endless tumbling together, it will be Ada that Van loves all of his 97 years and to whom he comes back again and again and finally permanently. To return to the theory of time with which the book essentially deals (however rakish, or raffish, the fictional substructure) Nabokov discusses it at length (and finally in a closing essay) via Veen who makes it his lifework (along with dreams and dementia): time as memory and memory in the making, time as perception, time as a "continuous becoming" and a threatening disintegration into "everlasting nonlastingness" or oblivion, time and space, space and time with the defeating recognition that "I am because I die." But as Ada says, "We can know the time, we can know a time. We can never know Time." . . . And to return to the above mentioned apparatus: it's all there—the wordmanship and the polylingual punning (Aujourd'hui— heute-toity); the entomological and botanical addenda (maidenhair and butterflies); and the particular pleasures of little girls although, as in Lolita, the erotica is a dalliance of the intellect rather than the flesh. But as compared to the earlier books, there is little passion or compassion: some of it is dazzling, much of it is enervating. And as for that general reader, Caveat caviar.
Pub Date: May 5, 1969
ISBN: 0679725229
Page Count: 626
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969
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 deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 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.
