Review
This review was published on Goodreads.
Author’s Note (05 Jun 2024): This review was written over 2 years ago.
4.5/5 - spellbinding.
I have sung praises for A Song of Achilles and I will sing it again. Rarely had a book affected me that much, with its saccharine prose and ultra-melodramatic plot that somehow reflected my inner life: the first queer novel I’ve read that made me feel seen. Which is why I would say that Circe is a huge surprise for me, since it’s even better than I imagined.
Featuring a most compelling protagonist in contemporary literature, this retelling of Circe the witch is just as good as The Song of Achilles, and a masterclass in handling complex characters and navigating internal journeys. Madeline Miller’s writing is dazzling, as always: there is a lyrical, graceful quality in her works that few other writers could compare, let alone emulate. Though no prose stylist, in Ms. Miller’s hands the language cuts like scalpel incisions: never overwrought, but level and precise. I read Circe not because of my love for Greek mythology, but rather her beautiful, sometimes bold, explorations of the human psyche through her writing.
I’ve said that Circe is an amazing lead, but that is an understatement. Being a villain who turned men into pigs and flirted with Oddyseus while condemned to exile for an eternity, the source material already gives the author a lot to work with, but what makes “Circe” as a novel stands out is the way in which it handles character development. Far too often in art, in an attempt to put a more humanizing spin on an antagonist, its main character has to undergo a slew of mental and physical assaults until they could stand no more, and explode in a catastrophic bloodshed that we as bystanders are forced to empathize because look Ma he has such a sad background!
Then, what? Joker the movie ends with him killing Murray and savoring the carnage that he’s initiated. Carrie the novel ends with her murdering an entire school indiscriminately, then dies soon after. The point is made, the villain is humanized, the end. There is no turning back for the villain - only eternal pain remains. And no, I don’t accept a weepy apologia for your crimes as redemption; it explains, not excuses.
Circe would have none of that. I went into this novel half expecting that its course would spin entirely around Oddyseus’s refuge at Aiaia (Circe’s island). In retrospect, that was foolish. The novel’s titled Circe; this is her story, not his. Growing up a gullible, innocent, submissive nymph who’s cast away by her peers and father, Circe chronicles her journey to self-discovery, of how to become a strong woman who writes her own destiny without being sapped of humanity. There is no dramatic watershed moment that completely corrupted her heart, though pivotal moments are aplenty - in fact, it is best to think of Circe’s transformation from submissive nymph to villain and then back as a murky sliding scale, which is a much more accurate portrayal of internal journeys than the usual “last straw” plot device. At no point in the story did her action feel out of character, but by the end of this novel one could tell that she has come full circle, learning to feel safe and content in her own skin, casting away her last line of defense and step into the warm embrace of life. Circe the goddess ironically is the most human of all, be it gods or mortals. That, at last, is the heart of the novel: one does not have to give away their humanity in exchange for vengeance and spite and venom - shed your trauma when you’re ready, and live, fully and defiantly, like sunflowers rushing for the dawning light.
Do I have any “idk"s against this novel? Yes. This is Madeline Miller’s second Greek mythology inspired novel, and I’d like her to explore topics outside her boundary, free from any previous source material. And for all the praises I’ve heaped on this novel’s writing, Madeline Miller is surprisingly not very adept at characterizations, especially in dialogue scenes. Many of these characters speak in the same voice (influenced by her writing, of course, but having that metacognition to shift the prose in accordance with a character’s voice is appreciated), and dialogue scenes are straightforward, untroubled. I can’t blame her for having to write Gods with their “flat as a cardboard” personalities, but at least hide more stuff from our eyes and let us deduce them for ourselves.
All in all, beautiful novel and a worthy read. I’m going to let this simmer for a bit before deciding whether this should be inducted into the famed my-trash shelf, the Parthenon of Goodreads, but I don’t see why not; in fact, this might be the easiest inductee up to this point. (The Song of Achilles would always be my bae, though)
p/s: i’ve had enough of the greeks and their misogyny and vanity and rape and honor and revenge over the pettiest of crime and having as much character as a piece of cardboard and their “omnibenevolent” gods and human sacrifices and the Fates UGH why Greeks why i don’t take excuses thank you this would be the very last novel on greek stuff that I’ll ever lay my hands on thanks