CIRCEby Madeline Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018 Show 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. 23, 2018 Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018 Did you like this book?
After spending almost an hour wondering how to do justice to this work, I’ve realised the best way would be to begin by stating outright what South of the Border, West of the Sun isn’t. Firstly it isn’t a raunchy novel about a man’s bizarre bedroom fantasies; if that’s a letdown, Mills & Boons are always available at your local secondhand store. Neither is this book a soul searching travelogue, taking you across continents, to that quaint spot where one goes to heal his wounded ego. No, the title certainly has a bit more depth than that. Rather, the title is an allegory which alludes to the vagaries of life, like a pendulum, swaying between agony and ecstasy.
South of the Border, West of the Sun portrays the story of Hajime, a youth born in post-war Japan to parents of average middle-class standing, his interactions and relationships with people through life and his struggles, in later years, to shake off a listless existence. The longing for association with the right person is what Hajime has been seeking from his childhood days; but like the hands of a clock which cannot be wound back, actions of the past cannot be undone. Practicality triumphs over a painful wait and Hajime settles down. At thirty-seven years of age, Hajime is married to a caring woman and has two daughters he dotes on. With some help from his father-in-law, he starts and successfully runs two Jazz Clubs in an uptown district of Tokyo, and has made enough money to secure his children’s future. However, with each passing day, he is losing the will to carry on this mundane existence. He knows he has nothing to complain about, yet he can’t come to terms with this excuse for a life. Written as reminiscence, the novel is the work of a deft storyteller, in that words are subtle and emotions play out implicitly. The characters are eloquent, witty, and expressive without having to spell out every word. At a little more than 200 pages, South of the Border, West of the Sun is hardly a day’s read but filling to the rim. There are no sudden twists or skeletons tumbling out of closets to bring back hounding memories. It is a rather simple narration which tells a story at a calm and steady pace, something akin to a stroll on a winter’s evening. Some may find it boring, or a tad bit sluggish; Murakami is more an acquired taste. As for me, after completing this, books I’d read in the past seem like a mindless cackle. Do give it a try. Is Shimamoto real?Shimamoto was real, probably connected to the mob, but Hajime finally realizes his need to let go of "what might have been" and accept the middle ground--a life as a husband, father and successful entrepreneur--not a bad life after all!
What does south of the border west of the sun?The song in the novel is a metaphor for all of this. But when Hajime and Shimamoto contrive a meaning from the song, south of the border is somewhere ideal, somewhere beautiful, but west of the sun is a madness, unobtainable and ultimately self-destructive. There is a choice being presented in this interpretation.
When was south of the border west of the sun written?Murakami wrote the novel in 1992, as a visiting scholar at Princeton University. The English translation, by Philip Gabriel, was released in 1999.
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