Book Report: A Venetian Reckoning

24. Donna Leon, A Venetian Reckoning (1995) (4/29/21)

This is the fourth book (of thirty!) in Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti series, set in beautiful, moody Venice. (I read a British version; in the States, it's called Death and Judgment.) The story begins with a truck crash, then moves into a murder, and then another murder—that quickly gets whitewashed into a suicide. Prostitution figures in, and success: the two deaths, followed by a third, feature an international lawyer and a couple of high-profile accountants. The action takes us back and forth between Venice and the university town of Padua, a mere half-hour train ride away. We learn about in-house tensions at the police headquarters, or questore. And as always with Commissario Brunetti, we get to salivate at some scrumptious-sounding food:

He brought his attention back to the table and their plate of fettuccine, glistening with the sheen of butter. The [restaurant] owner came back, carrying a small truffle on a white plate in one hand, a metal grater in the other. He bent over della Corte's plate and shaved at the truffle, rose, and bent over Brunetti's plate and did the same. The woody, musty odour wafted up from the still-steaming fettuccine, enveloping not only the three men, but the entire area around them. Brunetti twirled the first forkful and began to eat, giving in whole-heartedly to the sensual delight of the butter, the perfectly cooked noodles, and the savoury, heady taste of the truffles. . . . They said little until the meal was finished, the duck almost as good as the truffles—for Brunetti, nothing was as good as truffles—and they sat with small glasses of calvados in front of them.

I would have to agree about truffles.

As for the mystery, this one ends up being very dark (according to one GoodReads review, it is the darkest in the entire series), involving not just sex trafficking but a more sordid side of sexploitation. When justice is served, in the form of murders, one nods in agreement: such crimes deserve punishment, yet such criminals are rarely caught out. The finale of the book occurs in a whirl, with justice of a different sort interrupted, the hand of corruption in evidence. I know that's cryptic, but I don't want to spoil the book. Phone records play a key role.

Here's a humorous passage that takes place in the police station. The Signorina is the secretary of the Vice-Questore; she pays a lot of attention (well placed) to her appearance and seems to know people all over town and in all walks of life—people that aid the investigation in all manner of ways. 

Brunetti went up the steps towards his office. Before he got to the top of the steps, however, he met Signora Elettra, emerging from the end of the corridor and turning down the steps towards him. 'Oh, there you are, commissario. The Vice-Questore has been asking for you.' Brunetti stopped and gazed up at her as she descended the steps towards him. A long saffron scarf, as light as gossamer, trailed behind her, borne aloft at the level of her shoulders by the streams of hot air that flowed up the staircase. If the Nike of Samothrace had stepped from her pedestal, regained her head, and begun to descend the steps of the Louvre, she would have looked much like this.
     'Um?' Brunetti said as she reached him
     'The Vice-Questore, sir. He said he'd like very much to speak to you.'
     'Like very much to,' Brunetti found himself repeating, impressed by the phrasing of the message. Paola [his wife, a professor of English literature] often joked about a Dickens character who predicted the arrival of bad things by announcing that the wind was coming from a certain quarter, Brunetti could never remember which character, or which quarter, but he did know that, when Patta 'would like' to talk to him, the wind could be said to be coming from that same quarter.
     'Is he in his office?' Brunetti asked, turning and going back down the stairs beside the young woman.
     'Yes, he is, and he's spent much of the morning on the phone.' This, too, was often a sign of a looming storm.

As always, I enjoyed getting to wander through the streets of Venice with the earnest Commissario, spend time with his wife and daughter, and meet a few interesting characters, some good, some not so good. I will look forward to the fifth book in the series.

Book Report: The Book of Delights

23. Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019) (4/23/21)

I love Ross Gay. (I've shared a couple of his poems before, here and here, and you can hear him in conversation with Pam Houston here.) In this book of 102 "essayettes," he takes on delight—daily: it was a project, begun on his 42nd birthday, ending on his 43rd. I love daily projects, too. (Obviously, he provides here a selection from the year.) 

The subjects range far and wide, from pecans to black bumblebees, a Rothko basketball backboard to a pawpaw grove, coffee without a saucer to Donny Hathaway on Pandora. Friends and family populate the essays. Some of the musings are focused, while some veer here and there. I especially enjoyed the pieces that include close attention and description, or some quirky retelling of an interaction he had, or a meditation on words and meaning, or, especially, a revelation, an insight, a sort of "note to self."

Like here, in #88, "Touched," after he has lovingly described three individuals who might be called eccentric or innocent, might be considered "touched," he writes:

All of these examples make clear that touched often also means exuberant or enthusiastic, both of which qualities can provoke in us, when we are feeling small and hurtable, something like embarrassment, which again maybe points to the terror at our own lurking touchedness. When I watched the child doing his wonky, unselfconscious moonwalk [to the song "Billy  Jean" while standing in line], I had a feeling that I might have then identified as embarrassment, aware of this kid's obliviousness, his immersion—his delight.
     But I am coming to identify that feeling of embarrassment as something akin to tenderness, because in witnessing someone's being touched, we are also witnessing someone's being moved, the absence of which in ourselves is a sorrow, and a sacrifice. And witnessing the absence of movement in ourselves by witnessing its abundance in another, moonwalking the half and half, . . . can hurt. Until it becomes, if we are lucky, an opening.

Or here, from #10, "Writing by Hand":

I often write [prose] on the computer, piling sentences up quickly, cutting and pasting, deleting whole paragraphs without thinking anything of it. For these essays, though, I decided that I'd write by hand, mostly with Le Pens, in smallish notebooks. I can tell you a few things—first, the pen, the hand behind the pen, is a digressive beast. It craves, in my experience anyway, the wending thought, and crafts/imagines/conjures a syntax to contain it. On the other hand, the process of thinking that writing is, made disappearable by the delete button, makes a whole part of the experience of writing, which is the production of a good deal of florid detritus, flotsam and jetsam, all those words that mean what you have written and cannot disappear (the scratch-out its own archive), which is the weird path toward what you have come to know, which is called thinking, which is what writing is.
     For instance, the previous run-on sentence is a sentence fragment, and it happened in part because of the really nice time my body was having making this lavender Le Pen make the loop-de-looping we call language. I mean writing. The point: I'd no sooner allow that fragment to sit there like a ripe zit if I was typing on a computer. And consequently, some important aspect of my thinking, particularly the breathlessness, the accruing syntax, the not quite articulate pleasure that evades or could give a fuck about the computer's green corrective lines (how they injure us!) would be chiseled, likely with a semicolon and a proper predicate, into something correct, and, maybe, dull. To be sure, it would have less of the actual magic writing is, which comes from our bodies, which we actually think with, quiet as it's kept.

And finally, I'll quote this, from #87, "Loitering" (which is also a meditation on production and consumption, racism and repression, as well as safety and laughter), because it caused me to go in search of this photo:

Carrie Mae Weems, Mom at Work, 1978–1984

There is a Carrie Mae Weems photograph of a woman in what looks to be some kind of textile factory, with an angel embroidered to the left breast of her shirt, where her heart resides. The woman, like the angel, has her arms splayed wide almost in ecstasy, as though to embrace everything, so in the midst of her glee is she. Every time I see that photo, after I smile and have a genuine bodily opening on account of witnessing this delight, which is a moment of black delight, I look behind her for the boss. Uh-oh, I think. You're in a moment of nonproductive delight. Heads up!

Hate speech

I got dinged this evening on Facebook for "hate speech." I was commenting on a friend's post. He remarked, "Over 40% of Americans and another 40% of the military have rejected getting the vaccine... doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." I responded, "Americans are idiots. Well, 40% of them. They prove it time and time again. In so many ways."

I didn't actually say anything so very different from what the original poster said. Did I? I was merely expressing support for getting the damn vaccine.

I have to wonder what Facebook's algorithm is. "Americans are idiots" = hate speech? Is it that simplistic?

Fortunately, I have been weaning myself off of Facebook. They're just doing me a favor. 

A few weeks ago I got "canceled" for a comment I made on a "friend's" FB page. (She unfriended me, summarily.) Granted, the comment reflected my ignorance of the subject—women being banned from wearing hijabs. It was strange, and a little painful, to be erased so swiftly. I would have preferred to have been educated on the issue. But I got over it. There is a lot of self-righteous judgment out there. I happened to be on the receiving end of it, and that was an interesting lesson for me.

So now I'm in Facebook jail for 24 hours. If I try to post, or even simply "like," anything, I get this message:

Yeah, that's Derek Chauvin getting removed from court in handcuffs underneath Facebook's admonishment. Talk about deserving punishment.

I no longer recall what my previous infraction was. Something egregious, no doubt. I am such a bully.

Meanwhile, in this great country of ours, bills are being proposed right and left—by which I mean, in red states—aimed at restricting people's ability to vote and clamping down on the right (First Amendment, dammit) to protest. I have a general sense of uneasiness, despite the respite we've gained from booting that buffoon out of the White House. I am not looking forward to the midterm elections. Too many Americans are idiots. 

More geocaching!

On Saturday, the usual suspects—me (annevoi), David (FifiBonacci), and Alastair (Mimring)—headed up to Henry Coe State Park to find another of the 100-Mile Hike caches. This one was our sixth. We need three more. But the likelihood of our getting them all before the hot days of summer is slim, since it looks like Alastair will be off to Tanzania soon for work.

Nonetheless: six down! three to go! We are making progress! This one was perhaps the longest hike in the series, 14 miles, with serious elevation changes. It was a workout. Yet we got all 42 of the caches we sought, so yay for that. However, we somehow forgot to note the keyword in the 100-Mile cache that was that day's object. Yikes! It was the whole reason we were out there, to get that one scribbled word!

Fortunately, the cache owner, Ullii/Julie, was most accommodating and surrendered the word (it was, aptly, "up") without us needing to beg. So we were left with a sense of accomplishment and many happy memories. Here are a few photos from the day:

Winter Pond: the cache is at the base of the post David is leaning on

Just some beautiful scenery: the newly leafing oaks were splendid!

The wildflowers were out too: here, vetch.

An oak. There was a cache here. Perfect place for one.

Mimring trying (in vain) to capture the glory of the
wildflower-bedazzled setting.

Just lovely, no?

One thing I love about geocaching is that you tend to be
lured off trail, to magnificent spots you wouldn't
otherwise have visited.

New oak leaves. Late this year.

Sidalcea malviflora (“checker mallow”)

Up in a tree, cache in hand—
does it get any better?

On our way back down. There's a cache in 
that tree on the left. Just saying.

Unfortunately, when we got back to our car, we found a ticket for $71.50—because in our eagerness to get on the hunt, we'd forgotten that this might be a fee area? Yeah. It was. Which makes every one of our 42 caches worth (...calculating...) $1.70. Next time I'll try to exercise more situational awareness. Dammit.

Cooking (Mark Bittman)

I have been cooking a lot more during the last year, and enjoying it—because when I do cook, it's because I want to. The last couple of weeks, though, I haven't felt like it. So we've had leftovers; or David has cooked; or we've "scrounged" (different from leftovers: more of an individualistic free-for-all—chips and salsa, good enough!). We've also gone out to eat, now that we're vaccinated. What a luxury! 

But tonight, I was in the mood again. So I got out How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. Which I learned about not too long ago on an Ezra Klein podcast, where Ezra and Mark talked about our modern food system, and what's wrong with it. (So much.) When asked what cookbook Bittman would recommend for vegetarian cooking, well, guess what he recommended? But since he'd recommended books by other authors for other specialties, I thought, hmm, might be worth checking out. I am trying to eat more vegetables, after all. 

And yes: I love Bittman's book. Not simply because he offers a wealth of knowledge and good recipes, but also because he offers variations on those recipes. Each recipe becomes three or five or more. He teaches you how to improvise, in effect. How to think more creatively about food.

Here's what I made tonight:

Cannellini Beans with Cabbage and Pasta

Salt
1/2 head cabbage, preferably Savoy, cored and chopped
8 ounces cavatelli, conchiglie, or orecchiette
2 tablespoons olive oil or butter
1 large or 2 medium leeks, including some green parts, rinsed and thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
1 celery stalk, chopped
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 cup dry white wine (optional)
1 cup vegetable stock
3 cups cooked or canned cannellini beans, drained (can also use pinto or chickpeas)
Pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino Romano for garnish (optional)

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the cabbage and cook until just tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Use a slotted spoon or a small strainer to fish it out; drain and set aside. When the water returns to a boil, add the pasta and cook until tender but firm, 7 to 8 minutes, then drain.
2. Meanwhile, put the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it's hot, add the leeks and celery and cook until softened, 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the thyme and the wine if you're using it, and cook for another minute, until the pan is almost dry. Add the stock, beans, and reserved cabbage. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook until the flavors blend and everything is well heated, about 5 minutes more.
3. Add the drained pasta to the skillet and stir gently. Taste and adjust the seasoning, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese if you're using, and serve.

(The variations involve spinach, chickpeas, and perhaps raisins.)

Anyway, the recipe was so delicious that I went back for seconds—something I rarely do. Maybe I just wanted more cheese. But I don't think so. It really was good. Simple but oh so springtime tasty.

I already have a shopping list to make more vegetable stock (this might become a new Sunday ritual) and a smoky eggplant zucchini soup. Just typing that makes my mouth water.

Here is Mark Bittman giving a TED talk, all the way back in 2008, about what's wrong with how we eat:

I am trying to get better about how I eat.... Home cooking is a good start. So are vegetables.

Book Report: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

22. Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017) (4/15/21)

I picked this book up because of a five-star review by a writer I respect. I must say, I was disappointed. Although the title character is, as all the adoring critics say, quirky and funny and, in the end, lovable (if not a bit judgy as well), the story itself leaves much to be desired: it is too pat, strangely naive. I saw the twist at the end coming from early on, and I found the way Eleanor simply quits a years-long heavy-drinking habit like that and comes to terms with a tragedy from her past as if it was a bee sting entirely unbelievable. 

But yes, I liked Eleanor, who is characterized by extreme loneliness, which makes her a social misfit, unable to anticipate social niceties or read people. Therein lies much of the humor. She also has a great vocabulary. I liked the friendship between her and an office co-worker, Raymond: they complement each other nicely. Eleanor is game to try new things, speaks her mind, is unafraid: all admirable qualities.

The story isn't much: it's basically about 29-year-old Eleanor, who lives in Glasgow, reconnoitering reality—hopes and dreams, old traumas, new promises—after having spent her adolescence as a foster child, been in an abusive relationship at uni, and then lived the decade of her adulthood in extreme isolation. She works in an office, and on the weekends she holes up with two big bottles of vodka and eats pesto pasta. I suppose over the course of the book she does develop from being "just fine" to opening up to bigger (emotional) possibilities in life. The joke (such as it is) of her misfitness can't be sustained, however, so it's a relief when she seeks therapy toward the end and realizes a few things about herself, even if her "recovery" happens too quickly and easily. 

Here is an example of her wisdom, which, again, strikes me as just a tad too . . . something: clichéd? too wise for someone with zero social skills? contradictory of the game way she embarks on new relationships? I don't quite believe it, and yet I also do. I can identify. Anyway, here she is at a funeral reception:

This was an all too familiar social scenario for me: standing alone, staring into the middle distance. It was absolutely fine. It was absolutely normal. After the fire, at each new school, I'd tried so hard, but something about me just didn't fit. There was, it seemed, no Eleanor-shaped social hole for me to slot into.
     I wasn't good at pretending, that was the thing. After what had happened in that burning house, given what went on there, I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world. I had, literally, nothing left to lose. But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I'd worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don't find very funny, do things they don't particularly want to, with people whose company they don't particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I'd fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.

My friend listened to the book, which features Scottish accents. Maybe I would have liked it better if I'd heard it? Entirely possible. I didn't dislike it. I'm just not as crazy about it as so many reviewers seem to be. I gave it three stars on Goodreads, meaning "I liked it." 

Book Report: The Mountains Wild

21. Sarah Stewart Taylor, The Mountains Wild (2020) (4/9/21)

I love a good mystery. This, however, was not one of them. At first, I found it too slow. Later, as plot twists started crowding in, the word "preposterous" kept leaping to mind. The writing itself is rather pedestrian (any character being described as tired-looking—and many were, because, oh, those police officers work hard—had a "gray face," "lined eyes," and "wrinkled clothing"). Although there are many descriptions of Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains, where most of the story takes place, they somehow never crystallized into actual, relevant places for me. It was totally unbelievable that there would still be frantic television news accounts, pretty much whenever a character encounters a TV, on a missing woman over two weeks after she disappeared. When the narrator runs into a love interest on a beach while she's out for a run, it's almost magically random. The main Irish detective always seemed to be "holding something back."

But anyway, the story: it is 2016, and Maggie, a 40-something police detective in Long Island, departs for Ireland when a clue surfaces that potentially links a newly missing young woman to Maggie's own cousin, Erin, who disappeared 23 years earlier. Possible connections to several other women, over the years vanished then discovered dead, are posited. Irish history, especially concerning the IRA, is invoked, and Irish gangsterism. Family mysteries and legacies come into play. A buried skeleton is discovered—and Erin's ID card. But the skeleton is not Erin.

The story bounces back and forth in time between 1993, when Maggie first went over to see what she could learn immediately after Erin's disappearance, and 2016. Maggie and Erin resembled each other, so whenever Maggie first meets someone who knew Erin, in whichever time frame, she is met by a "shocked" (or occasionally "frightened"), then "confused" look. Characters are introduced who seem to have had but the most glancing of relationships with Erin—but maybe they killed her? Or maybe they ran off with her, who knows? 

Throughout, we are treated to italicized interludes that narrate Maggie and Erin's youth, back when they were close as sisters, before "everything went wrong." Which I suppose, according to jacket blurbs, give the book its "incredible tenderness and emotional accuracy." 

Ultimately, everything is sorted out, with a final, and completely out-of-the-blue, twist. I don't mind a good twist, or some (not too much) suspension of disbelief, but this one... nah.

Perhaps if the same story had been in more deft hands, it might have worked. But I doubt it. In any case, I will not be seeking Sarah Stewart Taylor out again.

Book Report: Toward Antarctica

20. Elizabeth Bradfield, Toward Antarctica: An Exploration (2019) (4/6/21)

I started this book last year as I was heading to Antarctica. But I didn't get far. Although it is beautiful— beautifully written, beautifully illustrated—I did not have the  context to appreciate it fully. In some ways I still don't, because this book, which consists of short almost–journal entries, is very much about the author's personal experience. 

Bradfield is a poet and a naturalist, and Toward Antarctica provides us with snapshots, in both words and images, of several voyages she has made to the southern continent, South Georgia Island, and the Falklands as staff on a tourist ship. In it, she adopts a form originated by the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Bashō known as haibun, which combines prose and haiku. Though "prose" isn't quite accurate, for her style is quite telegraphic, requiring the reader to slow down and savor (or, sometimes, puzzle). For example, 

A gift. This. Unfair to claim & there were others and yet this gift: a minke exhales, unseen but heard. Spot its dorsal sharp among ice, in calm-silk water. Then along and under (under) my boat, eye skyward. Sea-warbled but clear. Open. Met. Calm water. Flank gold with diatoms. Still. Chunks of ice. Enough time enough weather enough whale enough boats for all on ship to muster, seek, find and not crowd. To drift as it circles, approaches, finds us approachable, re-approached. All balance, all sense, recalibrated.

stretched on low ice
ignored in near distance
a leopard seal yawns

Frequently, she also includes a footnote to clarify some historical point or other allusion within her entry. The layout is elegant, as are the (sometimes rather abstract) photographs:

My experience aboard a ship in Antarctica was different from Bradfield's, both because I wasn't staff and because our ship was very small, intimate, and we had a lot of flexibility. So I got the most out of her observations about wildlife and the places that I, too, visited: Port Lockroy, Neko Harbor, Half Moon Island, the Gerlache Strait. 

I also appreciated her epilogue, "A Letter Home," in which she asks: "Where do we source our information and how do we scrape down to the truth? How are we going to agree and make a plan to move forward, America, on this one subject in our own crowded, conflicted, contradictory, not-wholly-known land? There are so many subjects about which we are asking these questions."

This book prompted me to pull out my maps of Antarctica and recall our trip with all its glorious landings and Zodiac rides, seeing penguins, seals, whales. Now, perhaps, I should finally get around to curating the photos I took down there, and posting them. I relish the thought of a return visit, even if it is only via a screen.

Do I recommend this book? It's hard to say. As I mentioned above, I couldn't appreciate it until I myself had been to the land she describes. Even the sections about South Georgia and the Falklands were a bit of a stretch for me, though I've read about these places and seen photos, so that helped. It is a beautiful book, but it may in the end be of only limited accessibility.

Book Report: Topics of Conversation

19. Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation (2020) (4/5/21)

This is another in a series of books I've read lately by smart women with a contemporary literary style of experimentalism. Think Jenny Offill, Eula Biss, or perhaps especially Rachel Cusk with her mostly nameless narrator (as here) who engages in illuminating conversations (ditto, somewhat). 

I picked this one up because Merriam-Webster, the dictionary, is starting a "book thing," and this is their first choice. "Edgy, wry, and written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism," they say, "this novel introduces an audacious and immensely gifted new novelist."

Well, maybe. I definitely appreciated (much of) the writing skill and the edginess of the subject matter. I did not, however, fall anywhere near in love, or even like, with the narrator or her friends, family, and acquaintances.

The book plays out over 17 years, starting with a conversation in Italy when the 21-year-old narrator is nannying a 40-something's 7-year-old twins, and the mother tells a story about an earlier love affair that wasn't all nice. That sets the tone for the following nine chapters, which move forward chronologically and back to the U.S.—mostly California, here and there. And yes, many of the subsequent chapters also have to do with sex, control, desire, shame, yearning, as told in conversations, or rather, usually, monologues. It's the story, I guess you'd say, of the narrator's grappling with "what it all means." How to find one's center. How to move forward, if that's even possible. It's bold, and not always comfortable. Or successful.

Although I didn't especially like the book, I guess I'm glad I read it. I can't quite put my finger on what the problem was with the narrator and those she had conversations with. The brutal honesty didn't lead to revelations? The self-loathing didn't lift? It was all too heady and calculated, without enough heart? The narrator knew she was "the smartest one in the room"? Overall, there was a harshness to the lessons learned that I didn't find redemptive. Though then again, maybe that's just life? We don't actually live in a fictional universe where all the threads get pulled together.

Oh, and in the first eight chapters alcohol is a consistent crutch. That doesn't help.

At the very end, the last chapter or two, I finally got a sense that the narrator might—after having become a mother—actually have softened and discovered some agency, so I did finish the book feeling some relief. But it felt like too little too late.

For the quotation that I like to include in my reports, here's this, which gets at the overall sourness, though here it's also a little sad. She's talking with her mother, who has just bought a jade plant and several bouquets:

"Leads on any jobs?" [her mother asks]. I shrugged again. It's the flowers I hate, fresh bunches almost every day, tossed, fine, composted, before any hint of wilt, like bright blooms aren't a luxury, like they're some kind of need. When we argue about the flowers, the arguments I make are about waste and about money, valid arguments both. Though in fact what I hate about the flowers is that they are, for my mother, a source of pleasure, that my mother believes in allowing herself pleasure, in indulging her various material desires. What I hate about the flowers is that they are an example of the many ways in which my mother extends her kindness also to herself. 

I most likely won't be picking up Popkey again . . .

Book Report: Circe

18. Madeline Miller, Circe (2018) (4/2/21)

Perhaps because I am shockingly unfamiliar with Greek mythology (or virtually any mythology except Norse), I found this reformulation of aspects of the ancient stories—the rivalry between the Titans and the Olympians, the hierarchies of the gods, Odysseus's journey home from the Trojan wars—just splendid. I have of course encountered the names, and this book gave me more of a framework into which to fit them. 

At its center is the minor goddess Circe, an immortal, daughter of Helios and the nymph Perse, granddaughter of Oceanus. When she dares to push her powers by transforming a fisherman she has fallen in love with into a god, and a nymph whom she sees as a rival into a six-headed monster, she is banished, forever, to a remote island. But she is not totally isolated: the mischievous god Hermes pays her visits (and keeps her apprised of goings-on in the greater world); bad-girl nymphs are sent to her isle for punishment and become her helpers; and seafarers sometimes sail into her bays. Including Odysseus about halfway through the book, when the plot really picks up its pace. 

Circe is also, like her mother and her siblings, a witch, and as she settles into her life apart, she comes to master skills—potions and spells—that she had but stumbled onto before. Transformation is her special gift, as when she makes pigs of sailors who get unruly. She has this to say about being a witch:

Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. Even after all that, it can fail, as gods do not. If my herbs are not fresh enough, if my attention falters, if my will is weak, the draughts go stale and rancid in my hands.
     By rights, I should never have come to witchcraft. Gods hate all toil, it is their nature. The closest we come is weaving or smithing, but these things are skills, and there is no drudgery to them since all the parts that might be unpleasant are taken away with power. The wool is dyed not with stinking vats and stirring spoons, but with a snap. There is no tedious mining, the ores leap willing from the mountain. No fingers are ever chafed, no muscles strained. 
     Witchcraft is nothing but such drudgery. Each herb must be found in its den, harvested at its time, grubbed up from the dirt, culled and stripped, washed and prepared. It must be handled this way, then that, to find out where its power lies. Day upon patient day, you must throw out your errors and begin again. So why did I not mind? Why did none of us mind?
     I cannot speak for my brothers and sister, but my answer is easy. For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay.
     Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt.

I enjoyed thinking about the different lots of immortals and mortals, which play out in very real ways in this story. I enjoyed the range of affects and motivations, from cruelty to kindness, hope to resignation, selfishness to compassion. The Fates are a constant thread.

I enjoyed the language of the book too, which has a dignified presence befitting a goddess. It is slightly formal, yet always vivid in terms of detail and emotion. 

Circe isn't about plot per se, but about what moves us and drives us forward, whether we're a mortal soon to die or a god destined to be around for centuries. In many ways, we're not so different.