“So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.
“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.”
Madeline Miller, Circe
My love affair with Greek mythology started in elementary school. My dad used to watch the TV series “Hercules.” You know, the one with Kevin Sorbo in it? No? Was it just my dad that watched it? Anyway, I was intrigued by the stories of the gods, goddesses, and heroes. I checked out this giant book of Greek myths from my school library.
I think I had this book on constant checkout for months. I read it over and over again and tried to explain to all of my classmates why the books they were reading were inferior to D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. And then when Disney released the movie Hercules, I spent all of my time enumerating the things Disney had changed from the original myth. Yeah, I didn’t have a ton of friends in elementary school.
The point is, I was hooked. I eventually allowed myself to return the book and move on to other things, but Greek myths have always held a place in my heart.
Which is why it’s weird that it’s taken me this long to read Circe by Madeline Miller. It’s been on my radar for a long while. It won a Goodreads award in 2018, so I’m late to the game. But I’m glad I finally got around to reading Circe, because it was exactly the kind of book I needed to read right now.
If you read any of The Odyssey in high school, you may remember that Circe is a witch Odysseus meets on his journey home from Troy. She turns his crew to pigs. That’s pretty much all I remembered about her until I read this book. In Circe, Madeline Miller expands on the lore around the infamous witch to give us a deeply intimate portrait of rejection, loneliness, and self-acceptance. Circe is, at its heart, a book about self-love.
Circe is the daughter of Helios—the sun—and a water nymph. The other gods consider her to be ugly and untalented. They hate the sound of her voice, which they describe as thin. So Circe grows up as an object of scorn. She tries to make herself agreeable to her parents and her siblings, but she’s rebuffed time and again. Eventually—and if you read the book you’ll get all of the juicy details—Circe is banished to an island to live out the rest of her life in solitude.
But her ouster from the halls of the gods doesn’t end up being the punishment her father thinks it is. Alone and away from the malicious gaze of her family, she’s able to develop her talents and find that she’s not the untalented, worthless waste of divinity that her family has always allowed her to believe. Then, as she begins to interact with visitors to her island, she learns the joys of companionship for the first time.
What I loved about Circe is that Madeline Miller gives us the coming-of-age story of a goddess. We watch as Circe grapples with the nature of love and loss. She learns the value of vulnerability. She is stretched almost to the breaking point, and in her extremity she learns to stand up for herself against those to whom she always kowtowed. I think one of the most beautiful parts of the book is where she’s able to look at the ugliness within herself, try to make amends for the wrong she’s done, and allow herself to move forward.
If you’re up for a book that’ll suck you in and make you think, this is it.
Happy Reading!
