Book Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe is an awesome book, especially for fans of Greek myths - eight out of ten hot dogs! The book chronicles the lift of Circe, the nymph turned witch who sheltered Odysseus during the Odyssey.

Now, full disclosure - I'm a lifelong fan of Greek myths, which made this especially fun. However, all I knew of Circe was that she was a witch who slept with Odysseus on his way back to Ithaca. In fact, she was one of TWO witches who slept with Odysseus on his way back to Ithaca (Circe was the one who turned his crew into pigs; Calypso was the one who kept Odysseus enchanted for seven years - I always get them mixed up). Since I didn't really remember anything else about Circe besides the main bullet points in the Odyssey, I don't know what parts of this book are canon and which are created - but it is wonderful backstory.

In the book (if not in the myths as well), Circe is the first child of Helios, the Titan who pulls the sun with his chariot and keeps the rest of the Titans from attacking the Olympians. He takes his first look at his baby daughter...and decides she's not pretty enough to grow up to wed another god. Circe grows up an outcast in her family. She eventually finds out that she and her siblings are able to perform magic. After finding out how powerful her magic can be, Helios leaves Circe exiled on an island, while the rest of her siblings are free to roam the world.

If you're like me, you were expecting Odysseus to show up on that island soon after. But he doesn't show up until more than halfway through the book. Instead, after a tryst with Hermes, she is summoned to help her sister on Crete. There, she meets her niece Ariadne, helps her sister give birth to the Minotaur, and begins an affair with Daedalus, who fascinates her despite his mortality. Returning to her island, Circe is visited by her niece Medea, who has escaped King Aeetes with her new husband Jason. Wonder how that turned out.

Circe spends the next few decades/centuries alone before being used as a mentor for wayward nymphs. Eventually the first sailors arrive at the island. She helps them to a feast, and is raped shortly afterwards. Learning not to trust sailors, she devises a potion to turn mortals into pigs. She uses it on various crews over the years before the Ithacans arrive. She turns Odysseus's crew into pigs, but when Odysseus himself arrives she is captivated by him and treats him as an equal.

This was always going to be the crux of the story - why a man going through countless tragedies over the past decade plus just to get back to his wife would decide to sleep with Circe. Unlike what would happen later with Calypso, the Odyssey doesn't mention any magic at work with the Circe affair - Odysseus freely commits to Circe, even while openly longing to be back with Penelope. While it takes a while to get to (which is a plus), the book does offer sound reasoning behind what happens. Giving that away, as well as mentioning the last third of the book, is spoiler territory - just know that not everything is as it seems, and sometimes we only hear what we want to hear.

Again, great read, especially for Classics geeks like me - highly recommended!