Circe - A review by Diza Baryshnikov

 

By the same person who wrote 'The song of Achilles', 'Circe' by Madeline Miller is a amazing story with excitement, adventure, and a new point of view. A thousands year old, thousands of years long story of the Greek god Circe, daughter of Helios and Perse. An absolutely incredible book that I know is loved by many.

The thousand year plot starts with the birth of Circe. She is immediately rejected by her mother when her father, Helios the sun god, says that she will marry a mortal. Her aunt names her Circe (Hawk) for her yellow eyes and she grows to be a toddler in a matter of hours. Her father explains that she will never be as powerful or feared as he, teaching her the dynamics at an early age. Soon after, her brother and sister are born. They laugh and make fun of Circe’s face, voice, and eyes. When one of her uncles, Prometheus, is being tortured in front of a large audience of gods, she brings him nectar to eat while everyone else leaves, although the consequences for doing so would be severe. After talking to him, she realizes that she in not a part of her miserable experience, she is a creature in it. Many many years pass, and Circe falls in love with a mortal, Glaucus. However, Glaucus loves a cruel yet beautiful nymph, Scylla. Circe wishes for her to be seen as who she truly is and Scylla turns into a hideous monster. The Gods find out and Circe is exiled to an island called Aiaia. She spends many years there and learns to live by herself. She practices transformation, tends to her garden, and raises pigs. Hermes begins to stop by occasionally, amused by Circe’s ambivalence to him. She is summoned to help her sister give birth to a monster, and meets Daedalus there. After Daedalus is dead, and Circe is back at her island, a ship of sailors seeks refuge at her place. She feeds them, and the captain soon after rapes her. She turns the entire crew into pigs in response, and struggles with the trauma. The ships keep coming and coming, and she continues to turn them to pigs. Soon, Odysseus’s ship sails in, yet she struggles to turn Odysseus into a pig because Hermes had given him a potion to counteract her spell. They stay together, and after a year he leaves again. Stuck in a man’s world, Circe struggles with being one woman against gods and men.

 

Some books are incredibly hard to summarize and explain the essence of, and I found this book to be one of them. I spent quite a bit of time rewriting different sections, adding more details, yet trying to still not spoiling the ending, although the final summary ends quite abruptly. This could either be because I put too much information as usual, or because this novel is an intricate, beautiful, feminist reevaluation of the story of Circe, and I am going to believe it is the latter. Just like Madeline Miller's other book, she sucks you in from the beginning, and describes every scene with a feeling of fluttery new-ness yet sophisticated depth. Her writing seems different than most, and gives it a nice flavor. Circe is often seen as a spiteful, lonely woman who turns men into pigs for the fun of it, giving similarities to the world today, portraying women as evil people who are out to ruin men's lives when they come out to say what happened. She is stuck in a man's world, and instead of Miller showing her as a cruel woman with an intent to hurt every man, she is shown as a woman who has struggled with many things in the past, and uses pig transformation as a last option to regain a fraction of power over her body. Additionally to the amazing point of view given, the novel is also an amazing page turner, with adventures after adventures. The cliffhangers keep you on the edge of your seat, wondering how Circe will get through the next obstacle. If you are looking to read a beautiful feminist fantasy, read 'Circe'. I rate this book 100 out of 100 bittersweet tears.

 

- Diza :)