Nevertheless, the author possesses a gift for infusing a mundane situation (an abandoned housewife) with the implausible (a...
A woman drowning in self-pity and depression takes a plunge but manages to stay afloat with the help of a mermaid in this second novel by aquatic-obsessed Shearn (How Far is the Ocean from Here, 2008).
Jenny Lipkin’s life consists of breast-feeding her infant daughter, idle chitchat with other mothers in the park, trips to the store, a home in disarray, walking the dog and lots of Cheerios. Husband Harry works at his family-owned candy company, which isn’t doing too well, given current health trends and, perhaps, his mismanagement. When he fails to return home one evening, and $1,000 is missing from the company’s account, Jenny, a frazzled mess to begin with, becomes even more unwound. She’s angry with her husband, who’s a compulsive gambler, but she’s not all that concerned for his well-being; being left to cope with finances, her daughters and her mother-in-law is enough to drive her over the edge. Sinking further into a long-occurring depression, she dons a great looking pair of shoes and decides to jump off a bridge. But at the last minute, she glances at the shoes and, loathing the thought of another woman wearing them, changes her mind. Too late, she loses her balance, and into the water she goes; but instead of drowning, she’s rescued by a mermaid, a rusalka of Slavic lore, who then inhabits Jenny’s body and helps her turn her life around. Jenny cleans house, both literally and figuratively. Shearn’s narrative is delightfully manic and extremely witty at times, but the very elements that make parts of this book so pleasurable also become slightly monotonous toward the end: Jenny is a bit too consumed with her colicky kids, lactating breasts and relationships with family, friends and Harry.
Nevertheless, the author possesses a gift for infusing a mundane situation (an abandoned housewife) with the implausible (a mermaid) and building a story that many readers will find intuitive, clever and, on many levels, perfectly believable.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7828-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
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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