Book review: Circe, by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I loved Madeline Miller’s first novel “The Song of Achilles”. At the time, I'd just read Mary Renault’s “The Charioteer” (which I also loved) and I think the comparisons between both authors in the press, where Miller had just won the Orange Prize for Fiction with a novel that was reminiscent of Renault’s own homosexual love stories in Ancient Greece, left me pre-disposed to liking it.

It’s with Miller’s second novel, “Circe”, published 7 years later, that I spotted who’s she more alike: Anne Rice. “The Song of Achilles” is Miller’s “Interview with the Vampire” while “Circe” is her “Witching Hour”. Both authors deal with fantasy elements that involve the supernatural and awful god-like creatures, the humans caught in their intrigues and forbidden passions, with a good dose of sex. Mortality is also a preoccupation as well a religion and spirituality, the passing of time and the erasing of one’s own being and existence.

With “A Song of Achilles”, Miller explored the world of men and their wars in Ancient Greece, revolving around Troy, through Patroclus and Achilles' love. With “Circe”, she turns her eyes to the women from that ancient mythology, especially the ones given so little space in the epics: the witch Circe, banished to the island of Aiaia, Odysseus’ wife Penelope, the Cretan princess Ariadne and a few more. But the novel is firmly about Circe – a goddess who is unlike all the other gods; a goddess with a human heart.

I have a feeling I’ll re-read this novel at one point, and that I’ll enjoy it more. For this first read, I came to the novel in fits and starts and couldn't get into it. Circe moved from one ancient myth to the next (Prometheus, the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus) like a traveling guide, and it was only in the last third of the novel that the story seemed to settle on herself, and on what Miller was trying to say. The novel concludes in a beautiful passage which can’t be described here without spoiling it.

Afterwards, I had a look through Tiktok’s “BookTok” and was surprised at the number of young women who took this novel to heart. They experienced Circe as a feminist icon; they wrote tons of notes in their books; they cried at certain passages; they wished they could re-read the novel again without knowing what it was about. It’s a testament to the power of this myth – and to Miller’s research of it – that it can survive through the ages and be the subject of social media viral videos!

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