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. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.Ī retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend-the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. So, even if this saga isn't really much deeper than the Belva Plain variety, it's uncommonly satisfying-with sturdy, old-fashioned storytelling and a fine array of exotic, historical shadings.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. She doesn't rush the characters are clear and sharp there's style here but nothing self-conscious or pretentious. ("Thus the months went by, and it became clear to everyone, even Senator Trueba, that the military had seized power to keep it for themselves and not hand the country over to the politicians of the right who made the coup possible.") But there's a comfortable, appealing professionalism to Allende's narration, slowly turning the years through the Truebas' passions and secrets and fidelities. (Veteran readers of Latin American fiction have come to expect mysticism as part of the territory.) And the political sweep sometimes seems excessively insistent or obtrusive: even old Esteban recants from his reactionary ways at the end, when they seem to destroy his family. Allende handles the theosophical elements here matter-of-factly: the paranormal powers of the Trueba women have to be taken more or less on faith. And Alba, the last clairvoyant female of the lineage, will end the novel in a concentration camp of the Pinochet regime. Twin boys Jaime and Nicholas head off in different directions-one growing up to become a committed physician, the other a mystic/entrepreneur. Daughter Blanca ignores Class barriers to fall in love with-and bear a child by-the foreman's son, who will later become a famous leftwing troubadour (on the model of Victor Jara). So, with opposites attracting, the marriage of Esteban and Clara is inevitable-as is the succession of Clara-influenced children and grandchildren.
until he falls under the spell of young Clara DelValle: mute for nine years after witnessing the gruesome autopsy of her equally delicate sister, Clara is capable of telekinesis and soothsaying she's a pure creature of the upper realms who has somehow dropped into crude daily life. Headstrong and conservative, Esteban is a piggish youth, mistreating his peons and casually raping his girl servants.
Salvador Allende, an ill-fated socialist.) The Truebas are estate-owners of independent wealth, of whom only one-the eventual patriarch, Esteban-fully plays his class role.
A strong, absorbing Chilean family chronicle, plushly upholstered-with mystical undercurrents (psychic phenomena) and a measure of leftward political commitment.
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