Greek mythology's favorite witch

The 2019 version of me who first picked up this book and said "Not for me" is not the version of me writing this book review. That 2019 version evolved into a 2022 version who decided to give the TikTok-trending Song of Achilles a try. She bought a copy in a busy Florence bookshop and finished it quietly sobbing next to a total stranger on her flight home. But the 2024 version of me writing this review found a $5 copy of Circe at a North Park, San Diego book fair and thought, "It would be good to read for my thesis research. Why not give it another try." Madeline Miller's prose and storytelling style is one of my favorites among the great and the mediocre, but her ability to make seemingly unrelatable characters into three-dimensional, raw, humane characters isn't limited to Song of Achilles. While I enjoyed some of the subtle references to her other novel and its famous Greek characters, Circe is entirely its own. And even though many different renowned Greek myths see Circe, the exiled goddess and sorceress, lingering on the edges of their narrative, this book is clearly Circes' to illuminate. It begins at Circe's beginning, the kind of beginning that sort of feels like a middle, because gods and the descendants of Titans operate on their own calendars. The  passing of time and its effects are so well-captured in this book, especially because Circe is a narrator as aware of her own divinity as she can be while still only knowing what it's like to be immortal. It felt like a kind of mind trick to realize that hundreds and thousands of years pass between the events in this book, because Circe recounts her tales with the perspective of a goddess. The only instances where she comments on time are when she's made painfully aware of the many things she loves having expirations dates: the herbs and natural ingredients used in her draughts, the rise and fall of cities, the men eaten by the monster she turned Scylla into, and her own son, Telegonus. And then there's the matter of her three main lovers: the wise and creative Daedalus, the rampaging and complex Odysseus, and finally, Telemachus the Just. Her story doesn't revolve around the men who keep her company before their time is up. But her brief time with them lasts. I think this theme concerning time, specifically time from the point of view of a goddess never wanting for more of it, just makes the ups and downs of living a finite amount of minutes and hours and days all the more stark. I've gotten existential enough; I'll comment on something more lighthearted. I loved all the descriptions of Circe's island! It's the definition of an "I want to go to there" kind of place for an introvert who dreams of having a magical house that stocks and cleans itself, and beautiful private beaches, forests, and cliffs to go with it. Seeing the treatment Circe endured in the household of her father makes the solitude she receives in her exile ironic. Even Circe acknowledges that getting to finally rid herself of the family that never treated her like true family is a reprieve, not a punishment. Her island isn't a utopia, hence her iconic "I'll turn these men into pigs and be done with them" era. But the island brought her freedom. It, I think, allowed her to blossom into a version of herself she never would've been able to find in the environment of her childhood. She certainly never would've met the people she did, or become a mother and learn what it's like to care for a son she'll far outlive. Circe is made relatable in her trial and error, her mistakes and guilt, her choice to endure because it's not actually a choice at all. In this way, the human race is reflected in her: hurting, but enduring. And Circe is repeatedly good in her helping mortals and gods alike, time and time again, even when she's slighted in return and has every reason to become as callous as some of the gods she can't stand. This doesn't strike me as overtly feminist literature, and perhaps it's meant to be subtle, the opposite of in your face, but Circe is a feminist icon if I've ever seen one. She's also the one who warns Odysseus about the Sirens he'll have to sail past, marking him as the one man to hear the Sirens' call and survive (insert relevancy to thesis research here :). Oh, and the ending? It reminded me bittersweetly of La La Land's genius end, flinging itself so far ahead like a net that hasn't caught any fish yet. It implies Circe's plan to eat the flowers she's used to transform others, and in turn transform herself into a mortal, so she might live the rest of her days with a husband and children. So she might walk through the Underworld one day to be with them. To have an end. And readers can only hope she gets to live a version of that flashing epilogue once she drinks from her bowl. Now that's the kind of ambiguous ending I'm talking about.


Some of my favorite quotes from Circe:

"That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world."

"All this while, I have been a weaver without wool, a ship without the sea. Yet now look where I sail."

"I had no right to claim him, I knew it. 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."

"My name in his mouth. It sparked a feeling in me, sharp and eager. He was like ocean tides indeed, I thought. You could look up, and the shore would be gone."

"I had once told Daedalus that I would never marry, because my hands were dirty, and I liked my work too much. But this was a man with his own dirty hands."

"I loved his certainty, his world that was an easy place of right action divided sharply from wrong, of mistake and consequence, of monsters defeated. It was no world I knew, but I would live in it as long as he would let me."

"'It is strange to think of a goddess needing friends.'
'All creatures that are not mad need them.'"

"He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. 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."

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