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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2018, 400 pages
Paperback:
Apr 2020, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Dean Muscat
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Winner of the 2018 BookBrowse Fiction Award
The daring, dazzling and highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Song of Achilles.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.
With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.
NPR's Weekend Edition "Books To Look Forward To In 2018"
Esquire's "The 27 Most Anticipated Books of 2018"
Boston Globe's "25 books we can't wait to read in 2018"
The Millions "The Most Anticipated: The Great 2018 Book Preview"
Cosmopolitan's "33 Books to Get Excited About in 2018"
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN I WAS BORN, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities. We spoke to fish and nurtured flowers, coaxed drops from the clouds or salt from the waves. That word, nymph, paced out the length and breadth of our futures. In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride.
My mother was one of them, a naiad, guardian of fountains and streams. She caught my father's eye when he came to visit the halls of her own father, Oceanos. Helios and Oceanos were often at each other's tables in those days. They were cousins, and equal in age, though they did not look it. My father glowed bright as just-forged bronze, while Oceanos had been born with rheumy eyes and a white beard to his lap. Yet they were both Titans, and preferred each other's company to those new-squeaking gods upon ...
BookBrowse Awards
2018
Much of Circe is an exploration into what it means to be female in a world of men and monsters. While it is usually tenuous to compare an author's latest novel to previous work, it does feel as if Miller wrote Circe as a conscious inversion of her prize-winning debut The Song of Achilles in nearly every aspect. The pool of inspiration may be the same – primarily Homer's epics – but whereas Achilles was very much a book about mortal men coming to grips with their own version of masculinity, Circe is about a divine woman trying to consolidate her myriad feminine identities as daughter, sister, lover, mother, witch, and goddess. Graceful and majestic in equal measures, Circe is sure to leave an indelible impression on readers both new and returning to Miller's singular reworkings of Greek myths...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Dean Muscat).
Affinity Konar, author of Mischling
Circe bears its own transformative magic, a power enabled by Miller's keen eye for beauty, adventure, and reinvention. Through the charms of a misfit heroine, the world of gods becomes stunningly alive, and the world of our own humanity - its questions, loves, and bonds - is illuminated. This book is an immense gift to anyone who reads to find their own bravery and quest. Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth
An epic spanning thousands of years that's also a keep-you-up-all-night page turner. Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
Circe is the utterly captivating, exquisitely written, story of an ordinary, and extraordinary, woman's life. Helen Simonson, author of The Summer Before the War and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Madeline Miller, master storyteller, conjures Circe glowing and alive - and makes the Gods, nymphs and heroes of ancient Greece walk forth in all their armored splendor. Richly detailed and written with such breathtaking command of story, you will be held enchanted. A breathtaking novel. Margaret George, author of The Confessions of Young Nero
With lyric beauty of language and melancholy evocative of Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn", Circe asks all the big questions of existence while framing them in the life story of the famous goddess who had the magic of transformations...This is as close as you will ever come to entering the world of mythology as a participant. Stunning, touching, and unique. Mary Doria Russell, author of Epitaph
Written with power and grace, this enchanting, startling, gripping story casts a spell as strong and magical as any created by the sorceress Circe.
The nature of nymphs, the "least of the lesser goddesses," as they are referred to in Circe, is central to the novel. Circe, herself a sorceress or witch nymph, is most famous for turning Odysseus' crew into wild pigs and later becoming the hero's lover and adviser. In Greek mythology, nymphs are female spirits associated with the natural world. There are various kinds of nymphs presiding over all aspects of nature such as the Naiads and Oceanids of the waters and the Dryads of the forests. There are even breeze and star nymphs such as the Aurae and Asteriae.
The nymphs are rarely central protagonists of myths and are more generally seen to be companions to the Olympians. As an infant, Zeus himself was protected and nursed by the nymphs...
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