Booklist Reviews
In her stirring follow-up to the Orange Prize–winning The Song of Achilles (2011), Miller beautifully voices the experiences of the legendary sorceress Circe. The misfit daughter of the Greek sun god, Helios, her powers are weak and her speech too much like a mortal's. But her unexpected talents in witchcraft prove threatening to the Titans' realm, leading to her banishment to the remote island of Aiaia. There she resides, carefully perfecting her herb lore, until her solitude is disrupted by visitors both human and divine. With poetic eloquence ("the days moved slowly, dropping like petals from a blown rose") and fine dramatic pacing, Miller smoothly knits together the classic stories of the Minotaur, the monster Scylla, the witch Medea (Circe's niece), events from Homer's Odyssey, and more, all reimagined from a strong-minded woman's viewpoint. Circe's potential rival, Odysseus' wife, Penelope, is another memorable character, and the novel speaks to women's agency, war's traumatic aftermath, and how strength emerges from emotional growth. This immersive blend of literary fiction and mythological fantasy demonstrates that the Greek myths are still very relevant today. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
BookPage Reviews
Goddess of magic casts her spell
BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, April 2018
Madeline Miller's enthralling second novel may be about a goddess, but it has a lot to say about what it means to be a woman. In Circe, the acclaimed author of The Song of Achilles (which won the Orange Prize in 2012) unfurls the story of the legendary witch from Homer's "Odyssey" with lyric intensity.
Circe grows up in the palace of her father, the sun god Helios, listening to stories of the legendary fall of the Titans and conflicts among the gods. Like all immortals, Helios is ruthless, capricious and obsessed with maintaining his status. Circe, a goddess without exceptional beauty or discernible power, is sidelined in his court, unworthy of even being married off. It isn't until Circe falls in love with a mortal that she realizes she has the ability to bless or harm others through transfiguration—a discovery that causes her to be labeled a threat. Helios exiles her to a remote island; there, she is able to further develop her skills with pharmakeia, the art of using plants and herbs to perform magic.
Though sailors occasionally attempt to seek shelter on her island's shores, Circe protects herself by transforming any men with bad intentions into pigs. As centuries roll by, key encounters with gods and humans alike punctuate her isolated existence—a meeting with Medea and a shocking midwifery scene are particularly mesmerizing. Eventually, Circe's connections with others force her to embrace her powers, breach her exile and choose her destiny.
Miller, who studied classics at Brown University and teaches high school Greek and Latin, paints a vivid picture of classical Greece: the mindset of its people, the beauty of its landscapes, the details of daily tasks. The elemental allure of mythology, with its magic and mystery and questions of fate and free will, is presented here with added freshness that comes from seeing this world from a female perspective. Like its heroine, this is a novel to underestimate at your peril.
This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Copyright 2018 BookPage Reviews.BookPage Reviews
The Hold List: You're invited to dinner
We love many fictional characters, but when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, it takes a special person to earn a place at our families' tables. These characters would get our plus-ones. Now, who remembers if we pass to the left or right?
Barbie Chang from Barbie Chang
By Victoria Chang
For the eponymous main character in Chang's poetry collection, being a child is about grieving and caring for an ailing mother; for me, childhood was particularly the latter. My mother gratefully calls me a hero for doing something as simple as writing her resume or taking care of her when she's sick. My conversation with Barbie Chang would be about not only the mother-child relationship, but also distance and sacrifice, "how quickly the air // around [us fills] in the space afterwards" when our mothers leave—Barbie Chang's mother in death, mine as I matriculate into adulthood—and the sacrifices mothers make. I want to have dinner with Barbie Chang, and I also cannot wait to have dinner with my mother. —Prince, Editorial Intern
Helen Loomis from Dandelion Wine
By Ray Bradbury
I consider this summery, small-town novel to be Bradbury's masterpiece, its series of short stories offering some of the most beloved, idyllic scenes in my reading memory, from a paean to mowing the grass to the hopeful creation of a "Happiness Machine." Some tales crackle with the discovery of being alive, while others curl into the bittersweetness of memory and old age. In one story, we meet 95-year-old Helen Loomis, who is like a Miss Rumphius who speaks graciously, openly and ever kindly about her long and eventful life, the loneliness and freedom of her travels, her wildness and never marrying. Her story is one of love—and everyone at my family dinner would fall totally and helplessly in love with her. —Cat, Deputy Editor
Ralph S. Mouse from The Mouse and the Motorcycle
By Beverly Cleary
My family likes animals. When my dad was in college, he had a rooster named Jack who lived in his apartment. Later, he and my mom had a kinkajou named Pooh Bear who slept in the cabinets. I've picked up the exotic animal baton by adopting two chinchillas (Rupert and Terrence Howard). So if I had to bring a guest of honor to dinner, my family would certainly appreciate if it were a mouse. There are, of course, many fine mice in literature, but Ralph S. Mouse is the obvious standout choice. He's cute, he has great stories about escaping danger (essential for an ideal dinner guest), and best of all—at least in my Suzuki-driving family—he can do motorcycle tricks. —Christy, Associate Editor
Gansey from The Raven Boys
By Maggie Stiefvater
Under the right circumstances, I'd love to meet any of Stiefvater's Raven Cycle protagonists, but Richard Campbell Gansey III is the only one who'd be at ease in any social situation, including dinner with my family. For example: "Because of his money and his good family name, because of his handsome smile and his easy laugh, because he liked people and . . . they liked him back, Gansey could have had any and all of the friends that he wanted." He'd bring flowers for my mother. He'd call my father "sir." He'd compliment the meal and offer to help with the dishes. And after dinner, driving me home in his beat-up Camaro, he'd ask, a gleam in his eye, "How much do you know about dead Welsh kings?" —Stephanie, Associate Editor
Circe from Circe
By Madeline Miller
There is probably no one with a more extensive or fascinating array of stories to tell at the Thanksgiving table than Circe. In Miller's gorgeous reimagining of the legendary sorceress, Circe encounters Medea, Odysseus, Hermes, Athena and many more iconic figures. She is witness to some of the most well-known stories in Greek mythology, and through Miller's clear-eyed, rigorously researched perspective, figures of fable become complicated, contradictory beings of flesh and blood (or ichor) rather than cold marble. Also, it's important to note that many characters are either deeply dismissive of or outright hostile to poor, exiled Circe. As such, she quite frankly deserves a nice family meal where she can sit back and be the highly deserved center of love and attention. —Savanna, Assistant Editor
BookPage Reviews
The Hold List: You're invited to dinner
We love many fictional characters, but when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, it takes a special person to earn a place at our families' tables. These characters would get our plus-ones. Now, who remembers if we pass to the left or right?
Barbie Chang from Barbie Chang
By Victoria Chang
For the eponymous main character in Chang's poetry collection, being a child is about grieving and caring for an ailing mother; for me, childhood was particularly the latter. My mother gratefully calls me a hero for doing something as simple as writing her resume or taking care of her when she's sick. My conversation with Barbie Chang would be about not only the mother-child relationship, but also distance and sacrifice, "how quickly the air // around [us fills] in the space afterwards" when our mothers leave—Barbie Chang's mother in death, mine as I matriculate into adulthood—and the sacrifices mothers make. I want to have dinner with Barbie Chang, and I also cannot wait to have dinner with my mother. —Prince, Editorial Intern
Helen Loomis from Dandelion Wine
By Ray Bradbury
I consider this summery, small-town novel to be Bradbury's masterpiece, its series of short stories offering some of the most beloved, idyllic scenes in my reading memory, from a paean to mowing the grass to the hopeful creation of a "Happiness Machine." Some tales crackle with the discovery of being alive, while others curl into the bittersweetness of memory and old age. In one story, we meet 95-year-old Helen Loomis, who is like a Miss Rumphius who speaks graciously, openly and ever kindly about her long and eventful life, the loneliness and freedom of her travels, her wildness and never marrying. Her story is one of love—and everyone at my family dinner would fall totally and helplessly in love with her. —Cat, Deputy Editor
Ralph S. Mouse from The Mouse and the Motorcycle
By Beverly Cleary
My family likes animals. When my dad was in college, he had a rooster named Jack who lived in his apartment. Later, he and my mom had a kinkajou named Pooh Bear who slept in the cabinets. I've picked up the exotic animal baton by adopting two chinchillas (Rupert and Terrence Howard). So if I had to bring a guest of honor to dinner, my family would certainly appreciate if it were a mouse. There are, of course, many fine mice in literature, but Ralph S. Mouse is the obvious standout choice. He's cute, he has great stories about escaping danger (essential for an ideal dinner guest), and best of all—at least in my Suzuki-driving family—he can do motorcycle tricks. —Christy, Associate Editor
Gansey from The Raven Boys
By Maggie Stiefvater
Under the right circumstances, I'd love to meet any of Stiefvater's Raven Cycle protagonists, but Richard Campbell Gansey III is the only one who'd be at ease in any social situation, including dinner with my family. For example: "Because of his money and his good family name, because of his handsome smile and his easy laugh, because he liked people and . . . they liked him back, Gansey could have had any and all of the friends that he wanted." He'd bring flowers for my mother. He'd call my father "sir." He'd compliment the meal and offer to help with the dishes. And after dinner, driving me home in his beat-up Camaro, he'd ask, a gleam in his eye, "How much do you know about dead Welsh kings?" —Stephanie, Associate Editor
Circe from Circe
By Madeline Miller
There is probably no one with a more extensive or fascinating array of stories to tell at the Thanksgiving table than Circe. In Miller's gorgeous reimagining of the legendary sorceress, Circe encounters Medea, Odysseus, Hermes, Athena and many more iconic figures. She is witness to some of the most well-known stories in Greek mythology, and through Miller's clear-eyed, rigorously researched perspective, figures of fable become complicated, contradictory beings of flesh and blood (or ichor) rather than cold marble. Also, it's important to note that many characters are either deeply dismissive of or outright hostile to poor, exiled Circe. As such, she quite frankly deserves a nice family meal where she can sit back and be the highly deserved center of love and attention. —Savanna, Assistant Editor
Kirkus Reviews
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch."Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers." So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller's dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus' crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: "When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist." Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: "I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began. " This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that "not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead." Circe's fascination with mortals becomes the book's marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside "the tonic of ordinary things." A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller's readership to mushroom like one of Circe's spells. Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Reviews
Classics, anyone? Actually, classics, everyone; Miller's last title,
Library Journal Reviews
Having reinterpreted Homer's
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Miller follows her impressive debut (
School Library Journal Reviews
Circe, daughter of the sun god Helios, mightiest of the Titans, was a peculiar child who had few of the gifts the demigods enjoyed, and she was despised by her parents and numerous sisters for her deficits. What she lacked in godlike ability, though, she compensated for with a gift for herbology and witchcraft. When she is rejected by her first love, the mortal Glaucos—who pines instead for the beautiful nymph Scylla—Circe casts a spell that turns Scylla into a hideous sea creature. For her transgression, Circe is banished by Zeus to an island, where she survives alone until Odysseus, "son of Laertes, the great traveler, prince of wiles and tricks," lands upon her shores and is seduced by her. Drawing on the mythology of the classical world, Miller deftly weaves episodes of war, treachery, monsters, gods, demigods, heroes, and mortals into her second novel of the ancient world (after the Orange Prize—winning