circe book review guardian

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The original nasty woman is a goddess for our times

The archaeological evidence is sketchy, but the first pussy hat was probably knitted by Circe. Among nasty women, the witch of Aeaea has held a place of prominence since Homer first sang of her wiles. For most of us, that was a long time ago — 700 B.C. or freshman English — but popular interest in “The Odyssey” picked up last fall when Emily Wilson published the first English translation by a woman. Wilson, a classicist at the University of Pennsylvania, described Circe as “the goddess who speaks in human tongues” and reminded us that what makes this enchantress particularly dangerous is that she is as beautiful as she is powerful.

That combination of qualities has excited male desire and dread at least since Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. On papyrus or Twitter , from Olympus to Hollywood , we have a roster of handy slurs and strategies to keep women caught between Scylla and Charybdis: either frigid or slutty, unnaturally masculine or preternaturally sexless, Lady Macbeth or Mother Mary.

Now, into that ancient battle — reinvigorated in our own era by the #MeToo movement — comes an absorbing new novel by Madeline Miller called “ Circe .” In his 1726 translation of “The Odyssey,” Alexander Pope claimed that Circe possessed an “adamantine heart,” but Miller finds the goddess’s affections wounded, complicated and capable of extraordinary sympathy. And to anyone who thinks that women can be shamed into silence, this witch has just one thing to say: “That’ll do, pig.”

Miller is something of a literary sorceress herself. As a 39-year-old Latin teacher, she created an international sensation in 2011 with her debut novel, a stirring reimagining of “The Iliad” called “The Song of Achilles.” It’s a pleasure to see that same transformative power directed at Circe, the woman who waylaid Odysseus and his men as they sailed home to Ithaca.

The first English translation of ‘The Odyssey’ by a woman was worth the wait

“When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist,” Circe begins at the start of a story that will carry us across millennia. Although she writes in prose, Miller hews to the poetic timber of the epic, with a rich, imaginative style commensurate to the realm of immortal beings sparked with mortal sass. Circe’s father, Helios, lives in a palace of “polished obsidian . . . the stone floors smoothed by centuries of divine feet.” She describes a royal court just beyond the edge of physical possibility: “The whole world was made of gold. The light came from everywhere at once, his yellow skin, his lambent eyes, the bronze flashing of his hair. His flesh was hot as a brazier, and I pressed as close as he would let me, like a lizard to noonday rocks.”

In this fully re-created childhood, Miller finds the roots of Circe’s later personality and isolation. Mocked by her far more majestic family, Circe is a kind of Titanic Jane Eyre, sensitive and miserable, but nursing an iron will. (She also develops an acerbic sense of humor: Her father, she tells us, is “a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.”) Although her relatives disparage her, Circe cultivates the occult arts that will one day shock them. “I had begun to know what fear was,” she tells us. “What could make a god afraid? I knew that answer too. A power greater than their own.”

‘The Song of Achilles,’ by Madeline Miller

While working within the constraints of the “The Odyssey” and other ancient myths, Miller finds plenty of room to weave her own surprising story of a passionate young woman banished to lavish solitude. “To be utterly alone,” Circe scoffs. “What worse punishment could there be, my family thought, than to be deprived of their divine presence?” But her bravado is short-lived. “The still air crawled across my skin and shadows reached out their hands. I stared into the darkness, straining to hear past the beat of my own blood.” In that extremity, Circe discovers the labor and, eventually, the power of witchcraft.

A protagonist, even a fascinating one, stuck alone in the middle of nowhere poses special narrative challenges, but Miller keeps her novel filled with perils and romance. She’s just as successful recounting far-off adventures — such as the horror of the Minotaur — as she is reenacting adventures on the island. In the novel’s most unnerving encounter, young Medea stops by mid-honeymoon fresh from chopping up her brother. Chastened by bitter experience, Circe offers her niece wise counsel, but you know how well that turns out.

Which is one of the most amazing qualities of this novel: We know how everything here turns out — we’ve known it for thousands of years — and yet in Miller’s lush reimagining, the story feels harrowing and unexpected. The feminist light she shines on these events never distorts their original shape; it only illuminates details we hadn’t noticed before.

That theme develops long before Odysseus and his men arrive, as the novel explores the prevalence and presumption of rape. Again and again, sailors land upon Circe’s shore and violate her hospitality so grotesquely that she’s forced to develop her infamous potions and spells. “The truth is,” she says ruefully, “men make terrible pigs.” Considering the treatment she has received, we can’t blame her for concluding, “There were no pious men anymore, there had not been for a long time.”

Of course, her grim appraisal is a perfect introduction for Odysseus. He doesn’t arrive on Aeaea until more than halfway through the novel, but then Miller plays their verbal sparring with a delightful mix of wit and lust. The affection that eventually develops between them is intriguingly complex and mature — such a smart revision of the misogynist fantasy passed down from antiquity:

“Later, years later, I would hear a song made of our meeting,” Circe tells us. “I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero’s sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”

There will be plenty of weeping later in this novel, although it’s likely to be your own. In the story that dawns from Miller’s rosy fingers, the fate that awaits Circe is at once divine and mortal, impossibly strange and yet entirely human.

Ron Charles is the editor of Book World and host of TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com .

On April 18 at 7 p.m., Madeline Miller will be at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. politics-prose.com .

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Why the literature of antiquity still matters, by Michael Dirda

By Madeline Miller

Little, Brown. 393 pp. $27

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Madeline Miller

393 pages, Hardcover

First published April 10, 2018

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When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.

This is the story of a woman finding her power and, as part of that, finding her voice. She starts out really unable to say what she thinks and by the end of the book, she’s able to live life on her terms and say what she thinks and what she feels. - from the Bookriot interview

Scholars have debated whether Circe’s pet lions are supposed to be transformed men, or merely tamed beasts. In my novel, I chose to make them actual animals, because I wanted to honor Circe’s connection to Eastern and Anatolian goddesses like Cybele. Such goddesses also had power over fierce animals, and are known by the title Potnia Theron, Mistress of the Beasts.

My thoughts about [Circe as caregiver] really start with the gods, who in Greek myth are horrendous creatures. Selfish, totally invested only in their own desires, and unable to really care for anyone but themselves. Circe has this impulse from the beginning to care for other people. She has this initial encounter with Prometheus where she comes across another god who seems to understand that and also who triggers that impulse in her. I wanted to write about what it’s like when you to want to try to be a good person, but you have absolutely no models for that. How do you construct a moral view coming from a completely immoral family? - from Bookriot interview

“I wasn’t trying to write Circe’s story in a modern way… I was just trying to be true to her experience in the ancient world.” “It was a very eerie experience. I would put the book away and check the news. The top story was literally the same issue I had just been writing about — sexual assault, abuse, men refusing to allow women to have any power ... I was drawn to the mystery of her character — why is she turning men into pigs?” – from The Times interview

For Circe, I would say the Odyssey was my primary touch-stone in the sense that that’s where I started building the character. I take character clues directly from Homer’s text, both large and small. I mentioned her mortal-like voice. The lions. The pigs. And then when I get to the Odysseus episode in the book, I follow Homer obviously very closely… - from the BookRiot interview

In terms of sources, I used texts from all over the ancient world and a few from the more modern world as well. For Circe herself, I drew inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica , Vergil’s Aeneid , the lost epic Telegony (which survives only in summary) and myths of the Anatolian goddess Cybele. For other characters, I was inspired by the Iliad , of course, the tragedies (specifically the Oresteia, Medea and Philoctetes ), Vergil’s Aeneid again, Tennyson’s Ulysses  and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida . Alert readers may note a few small pieces of Shakespeare’s Ulysses in my Odysseus! - from Refinery29 interview

“When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.”

“They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.”

“Odysseus, son of Laertes, the great traveler, prince of wiles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”

“…All my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.”

“It was their favorite bitter joke: those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.”

“That is one thing gods and mortals share: when we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.”

It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures—flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.

The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

“It is not fair,” I said. “I cannot bear it.” “Those are two different things,” my grandmother said.

I would look at him and feel a love so sharp it seemed my flesh lay open. I made a list of all the things I would do for him. Scald off my skin. Tear out my eyes. Walk my feet to bones, if only he would be happy and well.

You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.

You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.

“Witches are not so delicate,” I said.

I did not go easy to motherhood. I faced it as soldiers face their enemies, girded and braced, sword up against the coming blows. Yet all my preparations were not enough.

"Next time you're going to defy the gods, do it for a better reason."

*Spoilers* How I wish Miller's Circe was a reimagining as opposed to a retelling and I say this because there's little else about Greek mythology that isn't readily available online or at the library. A reinterpretation, on the other hand, gives an author creative license to weave a uniquely extravagant and fantastical story ( Now I Rise did it perfectly) and perhaps one in which a lowly nymph attains great powers, transforms into a formidable sorceress who then proceeds to defy and defeat gods. But, I digress. If Miller's ultimate goal is to introduce Greek mythology to a new generation of readers, then, I think she succeeded. However, that's ALL she achieved. This story about an inferior but immortal nymph called, Circe, who is a progeny of not one but TWO Titans -Helios and Oceanus- is decidedly underwhelming, trite, and overwrought with both too many characters yet very little story progression. Presumedly, the author had a checklist of events (and characters) that simply had to make an appearance in the story, even if the tangent was superfluous and unrelated: Prometheus, and the banishment. Check Scylla, the six-headed monster. Check Pasiphae, Daedalus, the Bull of Poseidon, and the horror that was Minotaur. Check Let's not forget, Odyssey. And Hermes And Athena And many others who (please listen closely) WERE NOT REQUIRED TO MOVE THIS STORY FORWARD. Think I'm making this up? Well, let's see what the story's about shall we? 1. Circe is so dull and uninteresting that 2. Pretty much everyone ignores her; that is, until... 3. She uses her magic to turn Scylla into the six-headed monster. 4. Consequently, she's exiled to an island 5. Where she at times turned unsavoury sailors into pigs 6. Eventually leaving the island only after having lived there for centuries. 7. The end. All in all, I think if you're new to mythology then this is for you; but even then I'd recommend reading Greek Mythology: A Captivating Guide to the Ancient Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters instead.

Painting of Circe by Joseph Herrin

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure to not dishonor me.” “I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”

“You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.”

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”

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Awards & Accolades

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Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2018

New York Times Bestseller

by Madeline Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018

Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.

A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.

“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. 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. 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. 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. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.

Pub Date: April 10, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “ You’ll get only one shot at this ,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “ Don’t botch it .” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “ That form is a deal breaker ,” he tells himself. “ It’s life and death .” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

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Circe, a Vilified Witch From Classical Mythology, Gets Her Own Epic

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By Alexandra Alter

• April 6, 2018

On a cold, sunny afternoon in March, the novelist Madeline Miller wandered through the Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, swooning over ancient amphoras and ethereal statues of gods and goddesses.

She was eager to see a particular artifact — a 2,500-year-old wine vessel painted with a scene from Homer’s Odyssey, as Odysseus confronts the goddess and sorceress Circe after she transforms his men into pigs.

Ms. Miller was riveted and horrified by that scene when she first read the Odyssey, and it became a pivotal moment in her new novel, “Circe,” a bold and subversive retelling of the goddess’s story that manages to be both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right.

But on her way to see the vase, she kept getting distracted, dazzled by the mythical figures that have populated her imagination since she was a little girl, when her mother read passages to her from the Iliad and Odyssey at bedtime. More age-appropriate fare never grabbed her attention in the same way. “I wanted gods and monsters,” she said.

Visiting the museum felt like a homecoming of sorts. Growing up on the Upper East Side, she spent hours roaming the Met, marveling at the heroes, warriors and deities. Exploring those halls decades later, she was just as awe-struck.

“This is one of my favorites,” she said, bounding toward a marble statue of a wounded Amazon warrior, noting that the figure would have once been brightly painted. “You can see the drops of blood on the side of her breast.”

She spotted a terra-cotta plaque of Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, cautiously approaching his wife Penelope after he returns to Ithaca. “I love the emotion that’s conveyed in just her posture,” she said.

Tucked away in a dimly lit gallery was the Circe vase, which showed Odysseus pursuing Circe with his sword drawn as his pigheaded men trail helplessly behind him.

“Circe as a character is the embodiment of male anxiety about female power,” Ms. Miller said, as she studied the vase, snapping photos with her phone. “Of course she has to be vanquished.”

That scene infuriated Ms. Miller when she read the Odyssey on her own, at 13. It bothered her that one of the most powerful female figures in the epic was left kneeling and cowering before Odysseus, and then takes him to bed as a conciliatory gesture. “For the hero to succeed, the woman has to be put in her place, and that was always so disappointing,” she said.

Years later, when she was majoring in classics at Brown University and read the Odyssey in the original Homeric Greek for the first time, Ms. Miller began to rethink Circe’s story, which unfolds from Odysseus’s perspective, as he describes his time on her island to the Phaeacians. She saw that Circe, far from being purely a villain or a vanquished witch, had a benevolent side and played a crucial role guiding Odysseus back to Ithaca.

Ms. Miller’s fascination with Circe became an obsession after she published her 2011 debut novel, “The Song of Achilles,” a retelling of the Iliad that centers on a romance between Achilles and his friend Patroclus.

She had planned to stay away from epics for a while, but kept thinking about the witch, alone on her island. Why did she transform men into animals? What happened to her after Odysseus and his crew sailed away, or in the centuries before they arrived? She decided Circe deserved her own epic.

“Epic has been so traditionally male,” she said. “All these stories are composed by men, largely starring men, and I really wanted a female perspective.”

Recycling classical myths is a well-worn literary trope; everyone from Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood and Rick Riordan have riffed on and remixed Greek and Roman stories. Ms. Miller, 39, who lives outside Philadelphia, is particularly well equipped to tackle Homer. She began studying Latin when she was 12, started on Greek a couple of years later, and seems to have near encyclopedic knowledge of ancient Western gods and goddesses.

“Circe” — a feminist reboot starring a goddess who has often been overlooked, or miscast as a vindictive seductress — has drawn praise both from classics scholars and novelists like Margaret George and Ann Patchett.

Emily Wilson, a classicist who recently published a new translation of the Odyssey, said she was skeptical at first of yet another “retelling of a classical myth,” but was won over by Ms. Miller’s take. “What she’s doing is partly about gender, but it’s also addressing a bigger question about power, and the abuse of power,” she said.

In Ms. Miller’s version, Circe’s encounter with Odysseus is only a slice of her story, which unfolds over thousands of years and begins in the palace of her father, the sun god Helios. Her family members, who treat her with cruelty or indifference, become infamous in their own right: Her sister Pasiphae marries King Minos and gives birth to the Minotaur, a bullheaded, man-eating monster; while her brother Aeetes grows up to rule Colchis, the land of the Golden Fleece, and fathers Medea, who later murders her children.

Circe’s fortune changes when she discovers her power to transform. After she turns a nymph, Scylla, into a six-headed sea monster, Helios banishes Circe to a remote island where she spends centuries in exile, with wolves and lions as her companions.

Ms. Miller was intrigued by Homer’s description of Circe as ”speaking like a human,” an odd detail that is never fully explained in the Odyssey. In her novel, Circe’s deceptively soft voice produces grave consequences. When sailors wash up on her island, she welcomes them with wine and food, and they mistake her for a mortal. After a violent encounter with one sailor, she begins preemptively attacking them, turning them into pigs.

To flesh out Circe’s story, Ms. Miller looked beyond the Odyssey and consulted a handful of ancient texts. She found scattered references to Circe across the ancient world, and drew from the plot of the Telegony, an epic preserved only in a short summary, which tells the story of Telegonus, Odysseus and Circe’s son.

She plucked other details from the Argonautica, an epic poem about the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts, which describes how Circe performs a purification ritual for Jason and Medea.

She wove some of the mythology into her narrative, and ignored other depictions that struck her as silly or sexist, deliberately omitting a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses where Circe punishes a king who spurns her advances by turning him into a woodpecker.

“That’s one of the funny things about mythological realism, or whatever it is that I write,” she said. “You have to write about six-headed monsters, but from a realistic perspective.”

It’s perhaps the same reason Ms. Miller loves the Greek and Roman antiquities at the Met, works of art that feel both timeless and transcendent, yet lifelike. As she made her way through the treasure-filled galleries, she kept “nerding out,” as she sheepishly called it, over the relics. She paused to admire a marble figure of Aphrodite crouching in the bath and a headless statue of Hermes.

A look of excitement crossed her face as she rushed toward one of her favorite artifacts. “If you will indulge me, there’s a chariot,” she said, practically skipping off.

Follow Alexandra Alter on Twitter: @xanalter .

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Circe, Madeline Miller, review: Feminist rewrite of the Odyssey turns tale of subjugation into one of empowerment

Following her bestselling, prize-winning re-imagining of the 'iliad', miller turns to homer for inspiration once more, article bookmarked.

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The Song of Achilles , Madeline Miller ’s re-imagining of The Iliad that positioned the love story between Achilles and Patroclus centre stage, was both a bestseller and won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. With this recipe for success in hand, it’s not surprising that Miller – who teaches high school Latin and Greek – has turned to the same model for her thrilling second novel, Circe , though this time it’s the Odyssey that provides the primary text.

The powerful witch Circe, who waylays Odysseus and his men – turning the latter to pigs – on their long voyage home to Ithaca, is set free from the few meagre lines of text she’s afforded by Homer, and transformed here into the heroine of her own magnificent story. “How would the songs frame the scene?” Miller’s Circe often asks herself, well aware of the narrative control others exert over the story of her life.

The Classics are undergoing something of a feminist revisionist revolution right now. Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey – the first to be written by a woman – was published to great acclaim at the end of last year, and this August brings Booker Prize-winner Pat Barker’s new novel, The Silence of the Girls: a “radical retelling of The Iliad ” from the point of view of Briseis, the captured queen-turned-slave. So too, Miller’s Circe is a woman who will not be silenced.

“When I was born,” she begins her tale, “the name for what I was did not exist.” Circe’s witchcraft originates in her rage and jealousy, itself the result of years of harsh treatment at the hands of her more beautiful and powerful Titan kin – she is the firstborn of Helios the sun god and the beautiful nymph Perse (daughter of Oceanos). She’s dismissed as unattractive, her weak mortal’s voice considered most offensive of all, nevertheless she persists; one could well describe her as the original nasty woman.

One fears that once she’s banished to the island of Aiaia – punishment for transforming the beautiful but viper-hearted nymph Scylla, Circe’s rival in love, into a hideous sea monster – the narrative will stall. Instead, Miller weaves the tales of others – Medea, the bride of Jason with the blood of her brother still fresh on her hands; the birth and imprisonment of the bloodthirsty Minotaur; those the sorceress takes to her bed, Hermes, Daedalus, Odysseus, and finally his son Telemachus – in with Circe’s own, all as seamlessly as the beautiful cloth Circe herself spins on the splendid loom the master craftsman Daedalus builds her.

The enchantress’ “virtue” is “endurance,” and Circe is accosted with much that demands forbearance, all of which makes for gleeful, greedy reading. Written in prose that ripples with a gleaming hyperbole befitting the epic nature of the source material, there is nothing inaccessible or antiquated about either Circe or her adventures. Miller has effected a transformation just as impressive as any of her heroine’s own: she’s turned an ancient tale of female subjugation into one of empowerment and courage full of contemporary resonances.

'Circe' is published by Bloomsbury, £16.99

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Circe by Madeline Miller

17 Dec Circe by Madeline Miller

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“Circe” spans several centuries, offering a deep dive into the life of its eponymous character. It begins with Circe’s childhood in the halls of Helios, her father, where she struggles to find her place among gods and nymphs. She discovers her penchant for witchcraft, a talent that leads to her exile on the island of Aiaia. This isolation becomes both a punishment and a sanctuary, allowing Circe to hone her magical skills and interact with various figures from Greek mythology, including Odysseus, the Minotaur, and Athena. The novel is not just a series of events but a profound exploration of Circe’s evolution from a naive nymph to a powerful sorceress, grappling with her immortality and her desire to understand the mortal world.

Main Characters

• Circe : Initially a timid and overlooked nymph, Circe grows into a formidable witch. Her journey is marked by moments of vulnerability, strength, and deep introspection.
• Odysseus : A clever and complex character, Odysseus’ interaction with Circe adds layers to both their stories.
• Telemachus : Odysseus’ son, who visits Circe and develops a unique bond with her.
• Athena : The goddess who often stands as Circe’s antagonist, representing the capricious and often cruel nature of the gods.

In-Depth Analysis

Miller’s writing is a standout feature, with its lyrical quality and deep emotional resonance. The novel excels in its portrayal of Circe as a multifaceted character, exploring themes of power, isolation, and identity. It also delves into the pettiness and politics of the gods, contrasting it with Circe’s growing affinity for humanity.

• Character Development : Circe’s evolution is the heart of the story. Miller skillfully depicts her transformation, making her a relatable and compelling protagonist.
• Lyrical Prose : The writing style is evocative and poetic, enhancing the mythological setting and the emotional depth of the narrative.
• Pacing : Some readers might find the middle part of the book a bit slow, as it delves deeply into character exploration.

Literary Devices

• Symbolism : Circe’s witchcraft symbolizes her independence and self-discovery.
• Foreshadowing : The novel uses subtle hints to foretell key events, particularly in the interactions between gods and mortals.

Relation to Broader Issues

“Circe” speaks to the universal themes of identity, power dynamics, and the nature of humanity. It also touches on gender roles and the struggle for autonomy, particularly resonant in the #MeToo era.

“Circe” will appeal to fans of Greek mythology, character-driven narratives, and feminist literature. It stands out for its fresh take on a mythological figure often relegated to the margins of these stories. Readers who enjoyed “The Song of Achilles,” also by Miller, or “The Silence of the Girls” by Pat Barker, will likely find this novel captivating.

Potential Audiences

• Fans of Greek mythology and retellings.
• Readers interested in feminist narratives.
• Those who appreciate character-driven stories and lyrical prose.

Thematic Analysis

The novel deeply explores themes like female empowerment, the nature of divinity versus humanity, and the search for identity. Circe’s journey is a powerful representation of breaking free from societal constraints and finding one’s voice.

Stylistic Elements

Miller’s prose is rich and poetic, bringing a modern sensibility to ancient myths. Her use of vivid imagery and careful pacing adds depth to the narrative and characters.

Comparison with Other Works

“Circe” can be compared to “The Song of Achilles” in its retelling of Greek myths with a humanistic perspective. It also shares thematic similarities with works like “The Penelopiad” by Margaret Atwood, offering a feminist perspective on classical stories.

Potential Test Questions with Answers

• It represents her transformation from an ignored nymph to a powerful witch, allowing her to explore her abilities and independence.
• She portrays him as complex and flawed, focusing on his cunning and moral ambiguities.

Awards and Recognitions

“Circe” was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2019 and received critical acclaim for its innovative approach to myth retelling.

Bibliographic Information

• Title : Circe
• Author : Madeline Miller
• Publication Date : 2018
• Publisher : Little, Brown and Company
• ISBN : 978-0316556347

BISAC Categories:

• Historical – Ancient
• Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
• War & Military

Summaries of Awards and Other Reviews

• Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominee for Adult Literature (2019)
• ALA Alex Award (2019) ,
• Tähtifantasia Award Nominee (2022)
• Women’s Prize for Fiction Nominee (2019)
• The Kitschies for Red Tentacle (Best Novel) (2019) ,
• Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy (2018)
• Book of the Month Book of the Year Award (2018) ,
• RUSA CODES Reading List Nominee for Historical Fiction (2019)

#1  New York Times  Bestseller — named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the  Washington Post ,  People ,  Time , Amazon,  Entertainment Weekly ,  Bustle, Newsweek, the A.V. Club, Christian Science Monitor, Refinery 29, Buzzfeed, Paste, Audible, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Thrillist, NYPL, Self, Real Simple, Goodreads, Boston Globe, Electric Literature, BookPage, the Guardian, Book Riot, Seattle Times, and Business Insider.

Purchasing Links

Is this book a series.

“Circe” is a standalone novel. However, Madeline Miller’s other work, “The Song of Achilles,” explores similar themes in a different mythological context.

About Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller is an American novelist and classics scholar. Her debut novel, “The Song of Achilles,” also received critical acclaim and awards. Miller is known for her ability to reimagine ancient myths with contemporary relevance and emotional depth.

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Circe by Madeline Miller review: a fresh take on ancient mythical tale

A complex, compelling portrait of one of the most intriguing women in western literature.

The daughter of a sea nymph and the Titan sun god Helios, Circe is doomed to immortality

Circe doesn't take up much space in Homer's Odyssey – the visit to her island takes up just 15 pages in Emily Wilson's 2017 translation – but the sorceress who turns men into pigs makes an indelible impact. Since her story was first told several thousand years ago, she's inspired countless artists and writers from Ovid to John William Waterhouse. In her new novel Circe , Madeline Miller, who won the Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles in 2012, offers a refreshingly complex and utterly compelling portrait of one of the most intriguing women in western literature.

Miller, who has an MA in classics from Brown University, draws on a wide range of ancient Greek and Latin sources to tell Circe’s story. Like its classical source material, the novel is episodic, but this structure perfectly conveys one of the novel’s central themes. Circe is immortal, which means that any relationships she may form with humans, from Daedalus to Odysseus, can only be temporary. They will always age and die, and she will have to move on without them, beautiful, powerful and alone.

The daughter of a sea nymph and the Titan sun god Helios, Circe begins her life in the halls of her father. When she was born, she tells us, “the name for what I was did not exist”. Is she a nymph? A goddess? The truth, as it turns out, is something entirely new. Despised by her divine family, Circe discovers her powers of sorcery when she turns a human fisherman into a god. When he spurns her for another nymph, Scylla, Circe transforms her rival into a horrific sea monster who becomes the sourge of all sailors – an act that will haunt Circe for the rest of her life. Circe is exiled to a lonely island, where she spends centuries honing her craft.

But she’s not totally isolated. She visits Crete, where her cruel sister Pasiphae gives birth to a monster that will become legend, and where Circe bonds with the inventor Daedalus. They work together to contain the Minotaur, combining Daedalus’s human skill and her sorcery. Miller’s depiction of what it feels like to work magic is extraordinarily vivid and convincing – after Daedalus gives Circe a beautiful loom, she is struck by the similarities between working with textiles and with spells: “the simplicity and skill at once…your hands must be busy, and your mind sharp and free”.

Unflinching horror

Circe must return to her island, where she is visited by her intense niece Medea and her husband Jason, an encounter which reminds her of her own loneliness. Not long afterwards we discover what turned her into the seemingly capricious sorceress of Book 10 of the Odyssey , who turns visiting sailors into swine. This is dark magic born of cruelty, described in scenes of unflinching horror, and for a while Circe's pain threatens to consume her. Then along comes wily Odysseus, and everything changes yet again. But where can your story end, when you're going to live forever?

This is, of course, a ripping yarn, and in other hands Circe could have been an ancient Greek equivalent of Marion Zimmer Bradley's sprawling 1983 bestseller The Mists of Avalon , which tells the story of Arthur through the eyes of Morgan le Fey. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But what elevates Circe is Miller's luminous prose, which is both enormously readable and evocative, and the way in which she depicts the gulf between gods and mortals.

The Titans and Olympians in the novel feel both disturbingly alien and utterly convincing. Miller writes of divinity as a quality that can be felt, expressed and, in the case of Circe, sometimes resented. Crucially, Circe never feels like a modern woman. She is the product of an ancient and immortal world, who begins by feeling repulsed by humans and gradually comes to realise that mortals can grow and change while her fellow immortals are doomed to find variety only in manipulation and destruction. Circe can be part of that cycle of cruel and pointless conflict, or she can choose to break it. In this unforgettable novel, Miller makes us care about that magical, mythical choice.

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BOOK REVIEW: Circe by Madeline Miller

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I will review Circe by Madeline Miller. At a later date, I will also review The Song of Achilles , by the same author. Like all my reviews, this one too has spoilers.

Circe by Madeline Miller was first published on April 10 th , 2018, and it has become a critically acclaimed novel since then, winning, for example, the 2018 Book of the Year Award allotted by the Book of the Month subscription book box service and the 2019 Book of the Year Award for Adult Fiction in the Indies Choice Book Awards of that year. It was also selected as Book of the Year by media outlets such as Buzzfeed , Refinery29 , The Daily Telegraph , Guardian , Time Magazine , Washington Post , among others. Additionally, it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, which the author had previously won for her debut novel The Song of Achilles in 2012. Moreover, the book received an exorbitant number of reviews praising it for its lyrical writing style, for making Greek mythology (more specifically, Homer’s The Iliad , with The Song of Achilles , and The Odyssey , with Circe ) more accessible to modern readers, for giving a feminist voice to one of the most enigmatic and intriguing figures of both Greek mythology and Western literature but who, at the same time, has been a victim of a narrative told by men, for giving her both a complex and sympathetic nature that has made modern readers identify with her more easily, despite having been born a goddess, in her various roles as witch, mother, wife, and lover…

Truth be told, it’s an impressive list of accolades. And I was a little hesitant to buy the book and read it when I first started seeing it everywhere. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey are books that I read in college, and to this day, The Iliad is my favorite book of all time. It is the book that made me fall in love with reading. So, needless to say, I’m an avid reader of Greek mythology. Books like Bulfinch’s Mythology , Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton, both Mythos and Heroes by Stephen Fry as well as Troy , countless copies of Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, Helen of Troy by Margaret George, the recently released A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes (see my review here ), The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (see my review here) and of course both The Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeline Miller are all on my bookshelves. My reluctance to buy Circe when I was still debating whether to get it or not, however, was due to the fact that I didn’t know if it would live up to the hype. Nonetheless, I was still willing to give it a chance.

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”

And I really liked it. In The Odyssey , Circe only appears in one book (chapter) of the poem. However, that was enough for her to leave her mark both in Greek mythology and Western literature even though she would also become one of the most misunderstood deities of the Greek pantheon because of her role as a sorceress and the image of a witch that transforms sailors into pigs that she gains just to force/convince Odysseus to stay with her and become her lover. But like most women in history and, in this case, mythology, there is more to Circe’s art of witchcraft and her ability to metamorphosize humans into pigs. Unfortunately, none of that is explained in Homer’s epic poem. Thus, she has been severely maligned by history and those that wrote it; like most women, she has not been given a chance to tell her own story. And that is what Madeline Miller has set out to do, and, boy, what a voice she has given her!

In Miller’s book, Circe is the daughter of the Titan Helios and the nymph Perse. But from a very early age, Circe knows that she is a pariah in her father’s house (palace) and is not wanted. She is deemed strange and different from all the other gods and goddesses, both Titans and Olympians alike. This, however, makes her dangerous to others and she is never fully accepted by those around her. Thus Madeline Miller puts forth the theme of the novel: that of a woman struggling to find a place for herself in a man’s (or gods’) world (something that many modern women can relate to) and, by extension, a longing of homecoming—a theme borrowed from The Odyssey , which chronicles Odysseus’ journey back home after the fall of Troy. Circe’s own journey and search for a home, a place where she can both belong to and be herself, however, begins ironically when she meets another Titan, her uncle Prometheus, who has been punished by Zeus for having given the gift of fire to mortals. And it is during this encounter that Circe first hears about mortals and can’t help but compare them to the gods and goddesses she has known all of her life. It is from this encounter with her uncle also that humans will thereafter be forever linked to Circe’s life, Odysseus chief among them.

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”

The first mortal Circe meets is Glaucos, whom she irrevocably falls in love with. Her love for him is such that she does everything in her power to turn him into a god, and she achieves this with the help of some flowers and herbs. She is, however, the first of her kind to ever accomplish this feat. And because nymphs have never been known to do this, no matter how much they’ve wanted to transform the objects of their affections into immortals, we know now that Circe is not a nymph despite having been born from one because she was able to transform Glaucos into a god.

Glaucos, however, changes completely once he is immortal and spurns Circe for her nemesis Scylla. And out of spite and jealousy, Circe transforms her into a six-headed monster. Circe, however, regrets her actions almost immediately and confesses her crime to her father. Helios, on the other hand, doesn’t believe her but when she shows him how she did it, she is deemed a danger to the gods and is exiled to Aiaia.

Aiaia, however, turns out to be the home Circe has always yearned for… and it is here that she hones the art of her witchcraft both by taming the animals of the island, for example, and making them into her companions and by tending her garden. But however beautiful her new home is, Circe is still lonely. And to abate the feeling, she welcomes both gods and mortals to her island, among them the messenger god Hermes, Daedalus, Jason and Medea, and Odysseus, who arrives at her doorstep to ask her to change his crew back into humans after she transforms them into pigs for trying to steal from her. 

“Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.”

            All of these “visitors” to Circe’s island and her interactions with them, however, are important for her own transformation from a goddess to a mortal, a decision she makes at the end of the novel in order to both live and die during her husband’s lifetime. What is interesting about this is that her own transformation is both the complete opposite of how the novel began, where she transforms Glaucos into a god, and is the culmination of her own powers and gift, the gift of transformation, thus bringing the novel to a full circle. That was very well done. I gave this novel an A New Favorite rating.

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Reviews of Circe by Madeline Miller

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

by Madeline Miller

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• Historical Fiction
• 17th Century or Earlier
• Adult-YA Crossover Fiction
• Strong Women
• Magical or Supernatural
• Top 20 Best Books of 2018

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About this Book

• Reading Guide

Book Summary

Winner of the 2018 BookBrowse Fiction Award The daring, dazzling and highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Song of Achilles .

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus. But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world. NPR's Weekend Edition "Books To Look Forward To In 2018" Esquire's "The 27 Most Anticipated Books of 2018" Boston Globe's "25 books we can't wait to read in 2018" The Millions "The Most Anticipated: The Great 2018 Book Preview" Cosmopolitan's "33 Books to Get Excited About in 2018"

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN I WAS BORN, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities. We spoke to fish and nurtured flowers, coaxed drops from the clouds or salt from the waves. That word, nymph , paced out the length and breadth of our futures. In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride . My mother was one of them, a naiad, guardian of fountains and streams. She caught my father's eye when he came to visit the halls of her own father, Oceanos. Helios and Oceanos were often at each other's tables in those days. They were cousins, and equal in age, though they did not look it. My father glowed bright as just-forged bronze, while Oceanos had been born with rheumy eyes and a white beard to his lap. Yet they were both Titans, and preferred each other's company to those new-squeaking gods upon ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Circe struggles to find a place for herself as a woman in a man's world. What parts of her experience resonate with modern day challenges that women face?
• A central theme of Homer's Odyssey is a longing for "nostos"—homecoming. In what way does that theme resonate with Circe's story?
• How does Circe's encounter with Prometheus change her? How does it continue to affect her actions?
• Throughout the novel Circe draws distinctions between gods and mortals.  How does Glaucus change when he becomes a god?
• Circe wonders if parents can ever see their children clearly. She notes that so often when looking at our children "we see only the mirror of our own faults." What parts of herself does she see when she looks at Telegonus...
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Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

Much of Circe is an exploration into what it means to be female in a world of men and monsters. While it is usually tenuous to compare an author's latest novel to previous work, it does feel as if Miller wrote Circe as a conscious inversion of her prize-winning debut The Song of Achilles in nearly every aspect. The pool of inspiration may be the same – primarily Homer's epics – but whereas Achilles was very much a book about mortal men coming to grips with their own version of masculinity, Circe is about a divine woman trying to consolidate her myriad feminine identities as daughter, sister, lover, mother, witch, and goddess. Graceful and majestic in equal measures, Circe is sure to leave an indelible impression on readers both new and returning to Miller's singular reworkings of Greek myths... continued

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(Reviewed by Dean Muscat ).

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Nymphs in greek mythology.

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By Madeline Miller

Book review, full book summary and synopsis for Circe by Madeline Miller, an elegant and delightful retelling of Greek mythological tales.

Circe is the daughter of Helios, God of the Sun, and Perse, an Oceanid nymph. Despite her divinity, she is less beautiful and lacks the skills of her siblings, so she is largely shunned and ridiculed among the godly.

When she falls in love with a mortal who, of course, is fated to age and die, she is desperate enough to experiment with a different and illicit type of power -- potions and witchcraft, and with it she discovers her own ability to bend the world to her will.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

Circe is born a God, the daughter of a Titan and a water nymph. However, she lacks the powers of her siblings and is less beautiful. They treat her unkindly, except for Aeëtes , but he is granted a kingdom and leaves.

Circe falls in love with Glaucos , a mortal fisherman. In hopes of making Glaucos immortal, Circe learns about illicit Pharmaka , herbs endowed with power that only grow where Gods have fallen. She transforms Glaucos into a Sea-God, but he soon becomes enamored with the beautiful but malicious Scylla . Circe turns Scylla into a sea monster.

Circe is exiled to the empty island of Aiaia for her use of witchcraft, and there she hones her knowledge of herbs and magic. One day, Daedalus , a famed mortal craftsman, arrives at Aiaia, requesting help for Pasiphaë , Circe's sister. In Knossos, Pasiphaë gives birth to a Minotaur. Circe uses magic to manage its hunger, and Daedalus builds it a labyrinthine cage. Daedalus is forced to help because they have his son, Icarus. Daedalus later tries to build wings to help his son escape Knossos, but Icarus flies too close to the sun and dies. Daedalus later dies from old age.

Next, Medea (Aeëtes's daughter) and Jason , arrive at Aiaia, asking to be cleansed. Medea has murdered her own brother and used magic to help Jason acquire a golden fleece. Circe warns Medea that Jason's feeling for Medea will wane now that she is no longer useful to him, and Medea angrily departs.

Later, Alke , the daughter of a lesser river lord, is sent to serve Circe, now known as the Witch of Aiaia, as a punishment. Soon, others adopt the idea and send their troublesome daughters there, too. One day, sailors show up. Circe offers them food, but the captain attacks her so turns them into pigs. Other sailors go to Aiaia when they hear of the island of Nymphs. At first Circe attempts to suss out if they are honest men, but Circe eventually assumes they are all dishonest and turns them all into pigs.

One day, Odysseus and his men arrive. He has an herb that prevents Circe from harming him. She finds him charming, sleeps with him and promises not to harm him. For a year, he stays as he mends his ship. Circe knows he is married, but she yearns for him to stay. Before he leaves, Circe sends him to a prophet and warns about the obstacles in his trip home (Scylla, etc.).

But Circe is pregnant and her mortal son, Telegonus , is soon born. Athena wants the child dead and offers her eternal blessings in exchange, but Circe refuses. Instead, Circe uses powerful magic to protect the island. Telegonus grows up, but longs to visit his father. Circe finally relents and helps him gather protections for the journey. She agrees to suffer eternal pain to acquire a deadly weapon, the tail of Trygon , a sea god. But Trygon ultimately doesn't extract the price and simply tells her to return it when she's done.

Telegonus leaves for Ithaca, but returns quickly because Odysseus is dead. Odysseus misunderstood his intentions and fought him instead, scratching himself on the Trygon's tail. Circe realizes that Athena wanted Telegonus dead to prevent this. Telegonus has also brought Telemachus (Odysseus’s other son) and Penelope (Odysseus’s wife) to the island. Penelope is worried Athena will claim Telemachus in Odysseus's absence and hopes for Circe's protection. Circe uses her magic to protect them, but Athena makes her demands. She wants Telemachus to leave and start an empire, but he has no desire for glory and power. However, Telegonus longs for adventure, and he accepts instead.

With Telegonus gone, Circe calls for her father, demanding that he talk to Zeus and release her from exile. She threatens to tell Zeus the Titans' secrets and start a war. Free to leave, Circe and Telemachus go to turn Scylla into stone, and Circe confides in Telemachus all her secrets. (Telemachus fills her in on what ended up happening with Medea — Jason married another. Medea kills the new wife and murders her children. A golden chariot whisks her home.) Penelope becomes an expert on herbs and becomes the Witch of Aiaia instead.

The book ends with Circe making a potion to bring forth her true self. She then has a vision of herself as a mortal, growing old with Telemachus. She drinks the potion.

For more detail, see the full Section-by-Section Summary .

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Book Review

Circe , by Madeline Miller, came out early last year, and I’ve been keen to find time for it, so it seemed like a good book to kick off the spring season.

It’s a re-telling the story of Circe, a character originated circa 8th century B.C. by Homer. In Homer’s in The Odyssey , Odysseus encounters her on the island of Aeaea where she is villainously doling out dangerous potions and turning men into pigs.

While in her original incarnation she’s mostly an obstacle to be overcome, in Miller’s reinvented tale, she’s given a new life, as well as a meaningful and imaginative story deeply rooted in a myriad of mythological tales.

The Palace at Knossos in Crete

A while back, I took a trip to Greece and visited one of the locations that appears briefly in the book, the remains of Minos’s Palace at Knossos in Crete. It was about a hour out from where we were staying, so we had to rent a car, and it was a whole mess, but I desperately wanted to see it.

I’ve come across other references to this site then, but Circe was the first book that ever made me reminisce about it. Reading Circe, I could imagine that crumbling Minoan archaeological site, thousands upon thousands of years old, as a living, breathing palace, gleaming with splendor and marveling that I’d once walked those walkways as well.

Miller’s mythological retelling is so dazzlingly alive . She uses Circe’s story to bring in a whole host of other mythologies, ranging from the Titanomachy (“battle of the Titans”) to the Gift of Fire, various other parts of the Odyssey and so on. The events of these stories all overlap, one washing over the next, intertwining in a delightful and inventive manner. Under Miller’s imaginative gaze, these classic stories are endowed with a newfound energy. Fleshed-out and lively, it’s a pleasure to read, especially if you’re someone who loves mythological tales.

The most difficult part of reading Circe for me was that it took forever because whenever a mention of any character came up, I was always tempted to look them up on Wikipedia to see what parts of their story originate from where. This inevitably led me down deep, and I mean deep , rabbit holes of endless Wikipedia entries and other sources filled with mythological esoterica. (But honestly, I’d consider that a feature, not a bug, when it comes to reading).

Ulysses at the Palace of Circe by Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg (1667)

Themes and Character Development

By the second half of the book, Circe has been alive for over a thousand years. She becomes more reflective about her experiences during various interludes, and certainly when Circe’s story takes a darker turn. At those junctions, Miller is thoughtful and introspective. In the book’s more somber moments, Miller explores Circe’s loneliness, alienation, and how her perceptions may have been warped by her experiences or misunderstandings.

Through the relationship of the gods, Titans, Olympians, lesser gods, mortals and so forth, the book contemplates the meaning of having power, how power is derived and how power effects how people relate to each other. Furthermore, using a range of classic Greek Myths to tell a story provides the perfect foundation and a wide berth to delve into fundamental questions about morals and goodness and pragmatism and ambition and balancing it all with the need to survive and protect yourself.

I loved what a complete character Circe is. She is complex, imperfect and is consistently drawn in a way that grounds her in reality, despite her divine origins.

Read it or Skip it?

I loved this book. I loved this book so much, it actually surprises me how strongly I feel about it. If you like mythology, Circe is a must read, no caveats. It is such a vivid and wonderful story that brings together so many bits and pieces of Greek mythology and somehow turns them into a cohesive book that is well worth your time. It is all at once thoughtful and entertaining and elegantly written. I was delighted by it.

If you aren’t as into mythology, I still think the story is very worthwhile, though you may have to exercise a bit more patience as you get grounded in all the characters and their stories. I’d really encourage you to give it a shot though if you’re looking for an entertaining, yet meaningful and complex story.

Circe won me over about 20 pages in, and it only got better from there. It’s honestly been quite a few years since I’ve found a book I loved as much as this one, so my feeling can be summed up as follows: 1) I’m sad it’s over, 2) I can’t believe I waited so long to read this, and 3) I need to go buy a copy of Madeline Miller’s previous novel, The Song of Achilles .

Have you read this and what did you think? See Circe on Amazon .

Book Excerpt

Read the first pages of Circe

Movie / TV Show Adaptation

See Everything We Know About the 'Circe' Adaptation

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38 comments

Share your thoughts cancel reply.

Been meaning to read this. Do you think reading it in electronic format is OK? Some books lose something when read on a device.

Funny you should ask! I actually read half of it as an ebook and half of it on hard copy (I had a hard copy but forgot to bring it and didn’t want to stop reading. Of course, by the end I loved it so much I went out and bought a first edition signed copy, haha, so now I actually have two.)

Anyway, my point is, it’s definitely readible as an ebook, I did just fine with it. But if you’re like me, maybe you’ll just end up wanting it regardless. Mostly my advice is to read it ASAP because it’s really good. :)

Perfect. Thanks!

Thanks for reminding me about this! I’ve added both Miller books to my TBR. We’re great fans of Greek mythology around here: I was hooked during my childhood, when the marionette puppeteers who used to make the rounds of the schools put on a “Golden Fleece” show; and my kids grew up watching the 1950s “Jason and the Argonauts” movie, when it was finally released on video, just as I had been raised on it, back when it was released to broadcast TV (I still love those ancient special effects).

Oh, I’m excited on your behalf, I think you’re going to love it! I honestly don’t understand how anyone can NOT love mythology, it’s so fascinating and fun and dramatic. That’s so awesome they did a Golden Fleece show, it sounds like that would be so much fun! Thanks for your thoughts and happy happy reading! Hope you’re having a great weekend!

I hadn’t thought about the puppet shows for years, and had forgotten the name of the troupe, but it must have been the Cole Marionettes (see Mr. Cole’s obituary, which mentions the Jason and the Golden Fleece show: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-10-21-8603190250-story.html ). The puppet shows were an eagerly anticipated annual event at our elementary school, but the only one I remember is the Golden Fleece. Greek mythology rocks! :)

Oooh! I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about this book! It’s waiting on my shelf … I think it’ll make a good July read?

Yes, do it! I actually bought this book back in September or somewhere around there and I still can’t believe I let it sit there for so long, haha. Hope you love it!

I adored Circe, and The Song of Achilles!

I’m really excited for the Song of Achilles, though I’m a little scared my expectations are way too high now, haha. :)

This has been on my TBR list for awhile. I hope I can get to it soon. Thanks for your thoughts.

So many books, so little time, such a familiar feelings, haha. This one is really good though. Hope you love it if you get a chance to read it!

Yeah this book is amazing.

Right?! The best part about book blogging is getting to chat with others about how awesome a book is when you find one you love… thanks for dropping by!

So glad you read this book!!! Honestly one of our favorites!!! You have to read A Song of Achilles, because like Circe it draws you into Ancient Greece like nothing before! When you get the chance to read, come check our review and tell us your thoughts as well!!

Thanks for dropping by! I’ll give your review a read later today, thanks for the heads up!

Glad to see you enjoyed this book so much! I listened to the audio last summer and found the story lively – it moves at such an absorbing pace, from start to finish.

Yeah, I was surprised how evenly paced it was considering how much of the book hinges on understanding her internal thought processes. I feel like it’s hard to write that stuff in a way that doesn’t make the book drag. I think it worked well in Circe because she does a fantastic job of “showing” you how her perspective on things is shaped, etc. instead of just doing a bunch of internal monologues. Thanks for dropping by!

I finished it today and absolutely love it. your review is beautiful

Thank you for the kind comment! Glad to connect with people who loved this book as well! :) Cheers!

This book was fantastic. Appreciate the review.

Thanks for dropping by and thanks for reading!

Thanks for your review, I’ve been meaning to read this book and whilst I’m not a huge fan of her previous book, I have to admit she has a beautiful writing and a melancholy that I like. Can’t wait to read this one.

Oh, I’m sad to hear you didn’t like A Song of Achilles. I’m really curious about it — I haven’t read it yet so unfortunately I have no insight to provide on a comparison between the two, but I hope you do like Circe, and thanks for reading the review!

Oh it’s not that I didn’t like it, it’s just that the first half of the book was a nit difficult for me. I didn’t quite like how the story was told, but the second half was amazing. I cried by the time it ends. Anw, I love reading your reviews, it’s always well written.

This book does deserve a glowing review! Loved it too!

I honestly can’t believe I didn’t read it sooner! Thanks for dropping by!

I wrote about Circe in my dissertation so it seems incredible I still haven’t read it!! Fingers crossed I get round to it soon!!

I bet you’ll love it! Thanks for reading!

I absolutely rave about this book as well! I was lucky enough to hear Madeline Miller talk about it at an author event – especially hearing her read sections aloud, based on the Ancient Greek oral traditions of storytelling. Your review sums up everything I enjoyed about Circe, I particularly like what you said about the book exploring power and morals in general. It’s amazing how easy it is to relate to the characters, even though they are divine beings living thousands of years ago! 😊

Oh that’s awesome, I’m jealous I would’ve loved to hear that. I’m so glad other people loved this book too! :) Thanks for dropping by!

Nicely written review. I’ll think I’ll read the book.

Thank you! Hope you like it if you get a chance to read it!

I liked Circe :) just wished she had gone deeper into the stories of the other gods!

I’ve just finished this book and the tears are still drying on my cheeks. I was so moved by her relationships with mortals, while the gods were cold and almost lifeless – as the author intended. There are so many themes to explore here. I borrowed a friend’s copy but might have to buy my own so I can revisit this intriguing and complex take on Circe – and spend some more time exploring the many threads of mythology that weave their way through the tale as you clearly have done. Thanks for the great review.

I just finished the audio version of Madelne Miller’s “Circe” narrated by Perdita Weeks. It was an astoundng experience to hear Circe’s story in Circe’s voice.

April 26, 2024

News and Notions From the Bennington College Community

Book Review: “Circe” by Madeline Miller

Teju Cole, in describing the way a curtain hangs in one of the many German hotel rooms he has inhabited, describes the creases in the fabric as “the divine enfolded in skin.” He sees, in the simplicity of the fabric, an enriching power of the self rooted in the body—the way it bends and creases, at rest and motion simultaneously, expands, contracts, inhales, exhales. A self-supporting system in an imbroglio of entangled systems stitched together to create a curtain, a swath of cloth, cut from other cloth, made from other threads and folds, bendable, luminescent. A creator of light and shadow alike. It blocks the all-mighty glow of an imposing sun; it enshrines the human spatially in a cocoon.

He finds, then, in this fabric, the power humans have over themselves; a seemingly divine power that, when pushed from the inside out, swells into being. The ordinariness of the human, the specificity of the lives they live, the vitality of their self-hood, the richness of their efforts, are endowed by themselves with power.

Madeline Miller’s book Circe bears conceptual similarities; in the nuances of its mythos it enfolds the electric, kinetic capabilities of our humanity in the self-made, effortful portrait of Circe, a witch who—through the tenacity of her own desires—swells into a power of her own construction.

In the book, Miller gives an epic retelling of Circe’s mythical legacy; sprung from the shadow of the space outside the page, she pieces several stories together—Odysseus’s journey and death, the tale of Telemachus, the Trojan War, amongst others.

Circe, daughter of the Titan Helios, banished to the island Aiaia for turning a nymph—Scylla—into a hulking monster, struggles with the loneliness of exile, the cruelties of men, the fears of motherhood, and the immeasurable journey of growing old and strong in her own skin (mostly while she is alone, as the world unfolds around her). To summarize the book would be to reconnect the stories which hold Circe as a unifying thread (the plight of Medea, the odyssey of Odysseus, the birth of the Minotaur and its labyrinth, all stack atop each other as moments testing the power, resolve, and affection of a witch growing into the vibrancies of her power).

Despite the fact that the book is structured in this long-winding, seemingly patchwork sense, rooted in the interiority of a character locked in perpetual stasis reaching outward into the world through the people she encounters, Miller colors the text with a vibrant, electric, and archaic voice, rich in the translatory power of the ancient myth, but rooted in the familiarity of the human.

For instance, when her son—Telegonus, son of Odysseus—asks her permission to leave the island, Circe is upset. Athena has placed a threat upon her and her son, vowing to take him for her own in an act of revenge against Odysseus. In an attempt to keep the goddess at bay, Circe cloaks the island in magic; a spell to hide the island, another to keep Athena away, a dual concoction tied to Circe’s own person and life force, an extension of herself in divine form, an exhausting effort, especially in its early creation, as the unruly baby Telegonus challenged her will. Now, her only son, who for sixteen years has been by her side and poses as a sliver of the man she fell in love with within the years past, seeks not only to leave her side but to step head-first into death. “For sixteen years,” Circe fumes, “I had been holding up the sky, and he had not noticed. I should have forced him to go with me, to pick those plants that saved his life. I should have made him understand all I had carried in silence, all that I had done for his safekeeping” (Miller 272).

Here, Miller places Circe at the center of a web. Around her rests her son and his ambitions, the spell protecting them both from an all-powerful threat, the effort of that magic, the toil of working and stitching the spell together from the earth to make the enchantment—an entangled thread being pulled loose from Circe’s fingers. This tension, however, is not inhibitory; rather, it allows Circe to grow into herself further—she eventually allows Telegonus to go, outfitting him with an all-powerful weapon—the tail of Trygon, whose venom kills even gods upon contact—which she acquired by facing Trygon himself, prepared to bear eternal pain for the sake of her son (she comes out unharmed).

This network defines the intensity of Circe’s journey. She is poised against a heap of conflict that rests outside her agency (i.e. the threat of Athena, the notion of eternal pain to save her son,) and enshrouds herself in a power born from the vitality of her own personhood. It is not an outside entity from whom Circe derives her power, nor an abstract divinity; she weaves spells from the toil of work, cultivating the earth, communing with it to produce a reaction through a kind of symbiosis. It moves, from the inside of her body outwards, in congruence with the earth, not in a binary dynamic, but a shared, collective. Likewise, in the face of certain pain, she steps forward to accept its weight from Trygon for her son, a sacrifice that she did not have to make, because the notion of the act itself was enough to sway him. In other words, Circe, by the fortitude of her own resolve, creates her own power, and uses it to denature the forces around her that meddle in the vitality of her life and love. No one can harm Telegonus; how could they, against a figure, a mother, engulfed by the vitality of love, found within herself, and given manifestation in the physical earth through magic?

Circe pours power from within herself, formalizing it in her decisions and her magic, creating a network with the outside world—including its conflicts—that is enriched by her own femininity, her own motherhood. In a world that seeks to strangle her power as a woman, she—in an act of divine resiliency—crafts its antithesis.

As a result, Miller constructs a story that, with its mythical form, is able to bend itself into new angles, that it may prismatically produce new bursts of light. Circe is reworked from a figure of antagonistic sentiment to a nuanced, rich, and complex character, tangible, vibrant, and electrified by the sheerness of her humanity, by her proximity to us as readers. Mythos, here, is a film, a medium, on which Miller has painted a figure of self-making power in the form of Circe.

Her prose behaves in a similar fashion. Miller’s prose is active, spiced with the same effort of Circe’s resolve: “I cupped my own hands in the dark,” Miller writes, “ I did not have a thousand wiles, and I was no fixed star, yet, for the first time I felt something in that space. A hope, a living breath, that might yet grow between” (226). From this void, the ethereal miasma of existence and nonexistence, the eternal “middle ground” within which we intersect and translate ourselves and the world around us, Miller stitches together a narrative bound by other narratives, a story folded within stories, exhuming a rich, resonant voice from between the blank verse of classical texts.

Her prose, at once incantatory and catalogic, capable of erupting with kinetic force to catalyze the story into motion (I tremble at the cosmic, hulking mass of tentacles Scylla spills from her body to halt Circe’s journey to Minos,) and likewise calm, tranquil, a miasma of image and sensation, of plants and vines swimming before her eyes, dirtying her hands, latching beneath the beds of her nails, clinging to nest-like hair. It is more than illustration; the book moves fluidly as a paintbrush, gliding with tenacity before slowing at the minute details that define and enrich the piece itself.

As a result, Miller’s book is rich with a self-creating vibrancy, a woven, viscous tapestry. It is shaped, like clay, from the effort of her own hands, just as Circe creates her own cosmic power, reaching into herself, into the earth, “elbow deep” at times to pull from the “divinity enfolded” in her skin. The book is Miller’s own testament to this work, and is as powerful, spellbinding, and moving as the sacrifices her Circe makes, as the power she makes from the calluses of her well-worn hands. 

Published in Arts & Reviews

Dylan Walawander is a third-term student studying literature and film. He is a book critic contributing review essays, essays on fiction, and nonfiction works. He is also a website administrator.

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AfterTheLastPage

Circe by Madeline Miller–After The Last Page Book Review

• Madeline Miller
• Author of The Song of Achilles
• Greek Mythology
• Titan/Olympic Gods
• Reimagining of The Odyssey Characters
• Multiple Awards
• Rated Best Novel of the Year

“Let me tell you a truth about Helios and all the rest. They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.” Madeline Miller, Circe (146)

In the reimagining of characters from The Odyssey, Madeline Miller brings to life Circe, a goddess born to the Titan god of the sun, Helios. From the minute of her birth, Circe is a disappointment to her father. She is the most unattractive of his children, powerless, and disobedient. He finds her to have qualities of the mortal world and claims that she will amount to nothing.

As Circe grows in her father’s kingdom, on the island of Colchis, she comes to realize that she is completely forgotten. No one pays attention to her or what she does, so long as she doesn’t offend anyone. Circe quickly learns to turn to the world of mortals for companionship, where there are no rules or intimidation tactics. As Circe is thrown into relationships with mortals, she l earns she does have powers after all —the power of witchcraft, where she can transform men into gods or swine.

Threatened by her newfound power, Helios goes to Zeus, who decides to banish Circe to the island of Aaia for eternity . Though meant as punishment, Circe thrives on the island and hones her witchcraft while crossing paths with many famous mythological figures, such as Daedalus, Hermes, and Odysseus.

Circe’s story embodies danger, feminism, and the struggle to safely be an independent woman in a male-dominated world. Torn between the world she comes from and the mortal world she admires, Circe must make difficult decisions that will test her strength and the powers she has come to develop.

• 4.5/5 Stars

As I started reading this book, I had seriously considered putting it down. The first few chapters were a bit difficult to get through, especially to those of us who aren’t familiar with the Titan gods. As someone who mostly has a knowledge of only the Olympians, I struggled to place the characters into the plotline. Yet, I have a 50-page rule and I kept reading, knowing the reviews of this book were just that good—and I’m glad I did.

There’s a good reason why Madeline Miller’s Circe has drawn the attention of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among others. Winning numerous awards, this novel embodies something powerful beyond witchcraft: Circe’s ability to transform herself. Circe comes from a male-dominated world where she is constantly controlled and belittled. As she is given the space of Aaia, away from the pressures of her family and Greek society, she has the ability to conform to who she wants to be.

Circe is seen as weak, or stubborn, for seeing the good in mortals and for not being as self-serving as her titan counterparts. In a world where Gods and Goddesses are selfish and only see what benefits them, Circe is open-minded and seeks for the best outcome in life, regardless of god or mortal. I think one of the things I loved most about her character was her undying determination. No matter how many years had gone by, or what struggles she went through, Circe continued to persevere because she felt she had to be strong. She was left alone, let down by everyone in her life, and she continued to keep going, not knowing what was in her future (or if anything was in her future) for the sake of continuing on only.

“My whole life, I had waited for tragedy to find me. I never doubted that it would, for I had desires and defiance and powers more than others thought I deserved, all the things that draw the thunderstroke.” MadEline miller, circe (244)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Circe is one of the strongest feminist characters I’ve ever read about. I thoroughly enjoyed her story, and I found it to be inspiring and enlightening. No matter the hardships her family or the world puts her through, she keeps going and she finds a way.

A couple of notes about things I enjoyed. Firstly, I love how Madeline Miller ends each chapter. There’s something significant and powerful about the language she chooses as she ends each chapter of the novel. This device makes the reader not only want to continue reading, but it also alludes that Circe is going to continue, as well, no matter how difficult that chapter was in her life.

Another aspect of this book I really enjoyed was Circe’s relationships with men. Each relationship she has is flawed, and she realizes that. While she wants to connect and fantasize about her life with each man that she falls for, she continues to support herself first. I think this is a characteristic that many women (and men) would admire, as it’s very difficult to take yourself out of a situation knowing how attached you’ve grown to someone. Whether it be someone she falls in love with, or a man in her family that she loves, Circe continues to put herself first and make the best of every situation, no matter how it might affect her emotions.

Though, I’ll admit, I’ve never read The Odyssey, there were so many fascinating things to learn from Madeline Miller’s retelling and her version of Circe’s story. I truly loved everything about this novel and the ending is absolute perfection. If you get the chance to read this one, I highly recommend it.

Loved this review? You can purchase Circe, by Madeline Miller, through this link or check out my last review, The Happy Ever After Playlist.

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Circe | By Madeline Miller | Book Review

* This post contains affiliate links to products I recommend. If you make a purchase through these links I will receive a small commission at no cost to you .

Title - Circe

Author- Madeline Miller

Publisher- Bloomsbury Publishing

Genre- Fantasy / Mythology retelling

Links- Book Depository | Goodreads | Amazon

My Rating- ★★★★★

About the Author

This book was one of my top reads of 2019 and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy and mythology. The story told, is that of Circe, the witch in Homer’s Odyssey. It is a refreshing and unique take on Greek Mythology while maintaining the nostalgia of the classics.

Circe grows up in the dark obsidian halls of her father, Helios’s, palace . Born to the Naiad Perse and the Titan Helios, Circe is not like her cousins and siblings. As a small child she wanders the dark palace alone. As she grows up, she remains isolated from her divine family who do not see her as an equal.

Circe finds comfort in mortals and soon learns of her true powers, the gifts of witchcraft . But with her new discoveries come consequences. Circe is banished to a remote island , yet again alone. On her new island home, Circe refines and discovers the true nature of her gifts. We follow Circe’s journey across hundreds of years and watch as the world changes around her. We see her discover and develop her powers, tame wild beasts, meet heroes, and deal with irrational and dangerous gods.

But in a world of vengeful gods there is always danger. To protect those that she loves, Circe must decide where she belongs; in the land of mortals or back with the gods who cast her out.

“ I watched her dance, arms curving like wings, her strong young legs in love with their motion. This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through patience and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind. ”

Circe by Madeline Miller Book Review. Photo by Jenny Sandiford.

I really loved this book. It is one of the most captivating stories I’ve ever read and will tell anyone who asks me about it to just go read it!  It is refreshing, unique, and offers a new angle to view Greek Mythology.

Circe has the feeling of an epic . The plot covers a timeline over hundreds of years, yet I was impressed with how time passed so naturally. The story kept us close to Circe and her day-to-day life and still portrayed hundreds of years going by.

As we follow Circes story, it seamlessly weaves known mythology into a new tale. We step into the myths of Prometheus and his downfall, of the Minotaur and his mother, of Icarus and his father Daedalus , and of course Odysseus . I had a soft spot for Daedalus and his story. I really liked this character, but it was sad knowing what would happen to his son. Of course, Odysseus held an important role in this story, but with a fresh view. He is a new take on an old character, and I enjoyed seeing this from Circe’s point of view.

I particularly liked the setting . Her island home with all the lions, pigs and wild animals had a magic and wild, but also comforting feel about it. The island becomes her sanctuary as we see her going about her daily activities in mixing up potions and discovering new magical properties from nature. You can almost smell the sea and taste the potions from all the vivid descriptions. It is interesting seeing her trapped in a world that is both prison and refuge, reflecting a constant battle in her mind for what she truly wants.

Circe is a strong character. From the very beginning we build empathy with her as she wanders the halls alone, wanting to be loved. I didn’t feel attached to her as a character, but more as a driving force in the story, and I always wanted to find out more. We follow her through trial after trial in life and see her overcome these obstacles and keep going. For a largely unimportant character in history, Circe has been turned into a hero in her own right . She is complex, flawed, and faced with many demons.

I can’t describe in words how wonderful this writing is .  The metaphors the author uses are vivid and descriptive, and relevant to Circe’s life in that time. The writing is beautiful and feels very authentic to the age. It is poetic and lyrical, but also very easy to read and get caught up in. I highly recommend reading this book.

Circe by Madeline Miller. Photo by Jenny Sandiford.

“ But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ”

“ 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. ”

About the Author- Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller has a BA and MA from Brown University in Latin and Ancient Greek, and has been teaching both for the past nine years. She has also studied at the Yale School of Drama, specialising in adapting classical tales to a modern audience. The Song of Achilles is her first novel and was the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012.

Check out Madeline Miller’s Website

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“ One of the things about Greek mythology that’s so interesting is just how horrible the gods are. The gods are really not exemplars. You might aspire to have the kind of power that they have, but, for the most part, they aren’t virtuous. They’re petty and selfish. The fact that they have achieved this ideal situation of having all the power, eternal life, the ability to fulfill every desire has not made them good people. If anything, it has done the opposite. ”

About the reviewer- Jenny sandiford

Hi I’m Jenny. I am passionate about promoting new authors and sharing any amazing books I find with the world. I am a book blogger, bookstagrammer, YA fantasy writer and travel writer.

I’m also a lover of nature, hiking, Harry Potter, cats, fantasy lands and quiet places.

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Gov. Kristi Noem Admits To Shooting One Of Her Dogs In New Book

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

Conventional wisdom suggests it’s not politically smart to brag about killing puppies, but South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is challenging that theory.

In a new book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” Noem reveals that she once killed a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer because she was “less than worthless” as a hunting dog.

Even stranger: She suggests her willingness to kill the animal is a political selling point since it shows she will do anything that needs to be done, no matter how “difficult, messy and ugly” it may be.

And it was definitely all three of those things based on an advance copy obtained by the Guardian.

Noem writes the dog, Cricket, had an “aggressive personality” and needed training before she could be used to hunt pheasant, per the Guardian’s review.

Although Noem thought taking Cricket hunting with older dogs would calm her down, she kept ruining things by “ chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.”

An electronic collar also failed to bring Cricket under control — a fact that she said became woefully apparent after the hunt when Noem stopped to talk with a local family. Cricket managed to escape the truck and attack the family’s chickens, “crunching [each chicken] to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

Noem ended up paying the family for the chickens Cricket killed, and said the dog’s reaction throughout the incident was “the picture of pure joy.”

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, per the Guardian. She calls Cricket “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

Noem writes she realized at that moment that she had to put Cricket down, and shot the animal in a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done.”

The hardest part, Noem writes, may have been when her kids came home from school and her daughter, Kennedy, asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

Noem thought enough of the dog-killing anecdote to tweet it out to her followers, saying, “ If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping....”

We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years. If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping,… pic.twitter.com/bKhpUkchHV — Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) April 26, 2024

But plenty of other people were gasping at her, too.

“I love animals…that’s why I shoot them” https://t.co/OCyglqcZth — Puppy (@liberalpuppy) April 26, 2024

You’re a piece of shit . Professional trainer might have helped that dog . And the poor goat . Shame on you . What a horrific act of ignorance . What a horrible role model you are . https://t.co/shL8fjlL1T — Teddi Murphy (@murphy_teddi) April 26, 2024

Kristi Noem murdered a puppy. End of story. https://t.co/Ezip4dBtG0 — Casey Stegman (@cstegman) April 26, 2024

This is fucking deranged - like so bad it’s even hard to read https://t.co/kSOP5ZSQ7e — Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 26, 2024

I always knew Kristi Noem was awful but grotesquely killing her own dog and bragging about it in a book should end her career forever. — Scott Dworkin (@funder) April 26, 2024

Kristi Noem is trash. Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I've killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent. She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not… — Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 26, 2024

Truly can't wrap my mind around Kristi Noem bragging about murdering a 14-month-old puppy and somehow thinking it makes her look good. More like Jeffrey Dahmer with veneers. https://t.co/UImrZFSNS4 — Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) April 26, 2024

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Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department review — heartbreak inspires anguish, anger and a career highlight

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Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

In what some call the Swiftverse and others the Swiftularity, the normal rules of pop stardom don’t apply. Gravity is suspended, time is reversible. Songs from years ago are re-recorded as identikit versions. Billionaire wealth is no bar to relatability. And a middling record about late nights can become the US’s bestselling album of 2022 and the second-biggest seller of 2023.

Yes, Midnights was a Swiftacular success. But it doesn’t rank among Taylor Swift’s best albums . The usual standards of her lyricism had slipped, while the storytelling smacked of a creative-writing class exercise in thematics. Perhaps her work rate of four albums in three years, compounded by preparations for what has since become the highest grossing tour ever, the Eras Tour, had had an effect. For all its commercial and cultural triumph, Midnights hinted at possible fallibility. Was this actually Taylor’s high noon, the Swiftverse’s maximum point of expansion?

The swollen title of her new album gives leave to wonder the same. Its 10 predecessors are one-word affairs, excepting her 2006 debut Taylor Swift and 2010’s Speak Now . In contrast, The Tortured Poets Department is a mouthful, and one savouring of doggerel at that. It teams her with her regular co-producer and co-songwriter Jack Antonoff. He’s a controversial figure among dissident Swifties, who accuse him of bringing a tasteful but dull electronic sensibility to her music. Another regular production and songwriting foil, Aaron Dessner of indie band The National, also features.

There are 16 songs in total, and four bonus tracks that appear in other editions of the album. All the songwriting and recording appear to have taken place while Swift has been busy with her Eras Tour , which starts its European leg in May. But this time there’s no sense of overload. The Tortured Poets Department has better writing than Midnights and a characteristically appealing turn from Swift at the microphone.

The topic is heartbreak: this is her break-up album. The real-life backdrop is the end of her six-year relationship with the British actor Joe Alwyn. That has clearly inspired the standout track “So Long, London”, a career highlight. Co-written with Dessner, it opens with a multi-tracked choir of Swift singing the song’s title in the style of the ringing bells of London. Then she recounts, with sorrow and coiled anger, the slow death of a love affair in a beautifully chilly electronic landscape lit by a muted glow.

Her portrait of doomed attachment to a moody, emotionally inexpressive man is the flipside to “London Boy” from 2019’s Lover , the most enjoyably hokey piece of Londoniana since Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent. The farewell to all that is underscored by songs that self-consciously tilt to the US. “Fresh Out the Slammer” has Swift “running home” to “the one who says I’m the girl of his American Dreams”. “But Daddy I Love Him” is an enjoyably melodramatic tale of small-town romantic scandal set to back-to-the-source country-pop.

The heartbreak continues on “Down Bad”, an irresistibly catchy ballad whose smooth glide belies verses about a crying jag in a gym. “Everything comes out teenage petulance”, Swift sings with perfect diction. “Fuck it if I can’t have him.” The register shifts for “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”, a charmingly cheesy dancing-through-the-tears number in which Taylor bigs herself up for doing the Eras Tour amid her anguish. The uncoupling inspires a sharp couplet: “He said he’d love me all his life/But that life was too short.”

Such moments will encourage Swiftologists to treat the album as coded autobiography. Swift’s love of puzzles, her Easter eggs, is further inducement to do so. But speculating about the subject of “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, a quietly venomous piano assassination, misses the point. These are examples of role play in a well-plotted album by a singer-songwriter whose performances are closer to acting than memoir.

Her vocals resemble soliloquies with immaculately timed shifts in pace, tone and emphasis. The music is her stage. Dynamic contrasts are more carefully rationed than they used to be, as with the exclamatory bursts of drumming in “Florida!!!”, a punchy link-up with Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine. It gets formulaic at times — “The Alchemy” is misnamed — but elsewhere the blend of subtly layered textures, swelling melodies and her distinctive voice hits the mark. This is the signature style that she has evolved, the sound of the Swiftularity.

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Ten Years to Save the West by Liz Truss review – shamelessly unrepentant

The former PM’s account of her time in office is unstoppably self-serving, petulant, and politically jejune

“T hey didn’t seem to understand,” writes Liz Truss on page 250 of this unstoppably self-serving reworking of Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, “that the UK was heading towards an economic cliff and that I was seeking to conduct a handbrake turn to avoid driving off the edge.” The scene is Birmingham, 30 September 2022, just before the self-described Brian Clough of prime ministers gave her keynote address to what turned out to be a divertingly catastrophic Conservative party conference.

The then prime minister is livid about how a cabal of Cinos (pronounced “Chinos” – Conservatives in name only) and other blob-adjacent political invertebrates were trying to nobble the week-old mini-budget she devised with her chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng. By means of this reform, a new globally competitive post-Brexit Britain would emerge. This “unchained Britannia” would be unconstrained by planning regulations, free to frack as never before and able to explore the North Sea for oil despite the ululations of virtue-signalling eco-zealots and the rest of the anti-growth wokerati. This would be a Britain where the super-rich were less hamstrung by corporation or inheritance taxes, and in which the 45p income tax rate (what she calls here the “anti-success tax”) would be little more than a bad memory.

What Truss didn’t seem to understand, now as then, is the handbrake had long ago come off and that both she and Kwarteng, like some latter-day approximations of Thelma and Louise, were barrelling towards oblivion. At Birmingham, in the face of objections from fellow Tories and serious market jitters, Kwarteng U-turned on that tax break for the rich. Later, the pair’s whole plan for growth was junked. Why? Truss is keen to tell us it wasn’t her fault. It was the fault of the economic establishment, apparently, whose members include the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, her fellow Conservatives, the IMF and President Biden, not to mention the Office for Budget Responsibility whose “overegged” prognostications of the disastrous impacts hastened speculative panic. They were the reason Britannia had to be chained back up again.

Within days of Birmingham Truss had fired Kwarteng. He learned his fate not from his long-time friend but from Twitter. “We needed a new chancellor who would steady the ship,” she writes coldly. As for Truss, she knew she was doomed a week later when the man she appointed as Kwarteng’s successor, Jeremy Hunt, told the prime minster that her head was “the price the markets wanted”.

Early in the book, Truss tells us she was known in her first ministerial appointment at the education department as the human hand grenade. Which, with her typical inability to read any given room, she takes as a compliment. After 49 days at No 10, she pulled the pin and blew up her own administration. For that sacrifice, Ms Truss, we salute you.

For all that this is one of the most shamelessly unrepentant, petulant, politically and economically jejune and cliche-ridden books I’ve read, one passage did make me empathise with Truss. It came when, having decided to resign, she gets a phone call from her daughter. Standing in the middle of the school playground, she asks her not to quit. The rest of the book’s tone is typified by the risible hubris of a remark Truss makes at the end of a chapter about her battles with proponents of trans rights as Boris Johnson’s equality minister: “I am not prepared to leave the field until the battle is won.” But this is just folly masquerading as indomitability, a recipe not for victory but for being the last twit standing. In any case, throughout her decade-long career in government Truss has repeatedly done the opposite, scarpering without achieving her stated aims.

It’s a truth insufficiently acknowledged that the political memoir is the basest form of literary genre. Publishers supply fat advances to more or less disgraced politicians despite, one suspects, the gnawing sense that very few people are going to read this guff. As a form it combines score-settling with rewriting history perfectly suited to those with a psychic unwillingness to address their own culpability. In that sense, I suppose, Truss’s memoir is one of the best of its kind. Until, of course, Johnson, who blurbs his successor’s book as “this invigorating tract”, produces his doubtless similarly morally blind true confessions.

“This book is not a traditional political memoir,” she claims. But it is: it’s old school “I was right, you were wrong” in which you’ll find nary a “I’m sorry” or “My bad”. Ten Years to Save the West is at its drollest in its score-settling. Of Nick Clegg she writes: “He would rather be popular than do the right thing. He has now found a much more appropriate home in California and is working for Facebook.” She even has a dig at the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee for criticising her 2012 plans for deregulating nurseries: “As far as the progressive left was concerned, I might as well have proposed arming toddlers with handguns.”

The book’s big reveal is not so much that Truss can’t say sorry, but rather that she didn’t know what was going on at the very heart of the British economy she sought to revivify. The extent of her ignorance is astounding. I kept writing “How did you not know?” in the margins of her chapters on her premiership. How did she, having served in government for so long, not recognise the she would face bureaucratic inertia or that the Bank of England and the OBR would try to scupper her plans? How, most culpably, did she and Kwarteng not have any idea that, as she puts it, “the UK was sitting on a financial tinderbox” at the very moment the pair tried to enact their revolution?

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The first and last time she met the Queen, who died two days into Truss’s premiership, Truss was offered good advice, namely: “Pace yourself.” “Maybe I should have listened,” she reflects in a rare moment of self-criticism. Perhaps she should also have listened to her husband, Hugh O’Leary. When she decided to stand for prime minister, he predicted it all would end in tears. He can’t be pleased to have been proved so comprehensively right.

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