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She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. 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. 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. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.Ī love letter to the power of books and friendship.Ī retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes ( Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing.
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Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen.
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Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery.
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She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library-an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.Īlice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England.