| A Mediterranean Romp Through the Absurd
Set on a small fictional island in the Mediterranean, Circe, Goodnight, the third novel by Suzanne Gray, is a fast-paced social comedy that brings the modern world of commerce and development into direct contact with people who seem stuck in simpler, earlier times.
The island of Circe, a remote and backward land beset by earthquakes and volcanoes, is owned by a descendant of the Medicis, who decides to establish there a retreat for weary United Nations medical workers. Toward this purpose, Ilja Milonowsky, a Polish-American engineer, is hired to head the construction team. When Ilja arrives in Circe, he finds it the strangest place he's ever seen, but he proceeds to make friends among the inhabitants, including a drunken dwarf, a fanatically moral crone with an overgrown libido, and a comely peasant lass, with whom he falls in love against the rules of his assignment, the laws of the land, and his better judgment.
A cross between Swift's Gullivers Travels and Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume, Circe, Goodnight is a wild, experimental novel built of laughter and anger. There is amusing and pointed symbolism: a bridge of truth; isolation of a godforlorn bucolic island; the island, Circe, is in the shape of a supine woman, her parts--north vs. south--separated by the treacherous sea; a Deus Ex Machina cum earthquake. The characters are funny and memorable: the grotesque and good-hearted Zeus, and his likable friendship with the more "normal" Ilja; the even more grotesque and pathetic Aybelle, with her gross antics and faux-religion; the down-to-earth Mac and his Daisy-Mae daughter Moonbeam. Along with Ilja, we're spending time in this zoo.
Circe, Goodnight is a highly entertaining romp, a social satire that's a salve to a world-weary reader. With good spirit and good humor, Suzanne Gray pokes fun at our world, and adds comic relief to her smart and biting view of human nature and politics.
Suzanne Gray's international career has included assignments in Italy for the State Department, in England for the deluxe hotel industry, in France as an editor, and in the U.S. as an official court reporter. She is the author of the novels 'Gio and Against the Current of the Congo, both published by Fithian Press. |
