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.
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. This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012).
Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. Masterful.Ī retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch. There’s a perfect part for Jeremy Irons.)Īn irresistible amalgam of Kipling, Rider Haggard, and Conrad at their very best.
#THE PIANO TUNER BOOK MOVIE#
Until the powerful dénouement, that is, when Drake discovers the manner in which he himself has been “played” as an instrument, and-in a deeply ironic climactic action-becomes the insubordinate “liberator.” (One keeps thinking of what a marvelous movie The Piano Tuner might make. A wealth of specific information-musical, medical, historical, political-and numerous colorfully detailed vignettes of life in Burma’s teeming cities and jungle villages provide a solid context for the increasingly intricate plot, which brings Drake into “complicity” with Carroll’s visionary dream of reconciling various native factions and brokering a peace that surrenders only “limited autonomy” to them. Reasoning that “if we are to make these people our subjects, must we not present the best of European civilization?,” Drake undertakes his arduous journey (thrillingly described), eventually arriving at the inland fortress of Mae Lwin, where the suave Carroll-part Albert Schweitzer, part Mistah Kurtz of Heart of Darkness-rules as a benevolent despot, aided in ways that aren’t quite clear by a beautiful Burmese woman, Khin Myo, to whom Edgar finds himself increasingly attracted. Anthony Carroll, a pacifist iconoclast who has set about winning over warring tribes by introducing their souls to music and poetry while healing broken bodies. Drake has been chosen to tune an Erard (French-made) grand piano for Dr.
In mild-mannered London, 1886–87, piano tuner Edgar Drake is persuaded by the British War Office to travel to Mandalay and beyond, during the third of a succession of Anglo-Burmese Wars, to fulfill a strange request from an army surgeon-major serving in Burma. A rattling good story, complex characterizations, and a brilliantly realized portrayal of an alien culture-all combine to dazzling effect in this first by a California medical student who has worked and studied in the Far East.
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