Padma Wulandari

Circe

Book by Madeline Miller

DETAILS

Publisher : Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (April 14, 2020) Language : English Paperback : 416 pages ISBN-10 : 0316556327 ISBN-13 : 978-0316556323 Lexile measure : HL660L Item Weight : 13.4 ounces Dimensions : 5.63 x 1.13 x 8.25 inches , "A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller is "both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times ). 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. #1 New York Times Bestseller -- named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post , People , Time , Amazon, Entertainment Weekly , Bustle , Newsweek , the A.V. Club, Christian Science Monitor , Refinery 29 , Buzzfeed, Paste, Audible, Kirkus , Publishers Weekly , Thrillist, NYPL, Self , Real Simple , Goodreads, Boston Globe , Electric Literature, BookPage, the Guardian , Book Riot, Seattle Times , and Business Insider . Read more

REVIEW

In Circe, the author presents us with a richly woven tapestry that does not merely repeat the ancient myths but deepens our understanding of them. Philosophers have opined that part of what makes us human is the foreknowledge that we are going to die. This knowledge makes us ambitious to achieve things, or at least to make the best use of our time on Earth. And, of course, it has led us to imagine beings that, unlike us, live forever. Before the “transcendental” religions, most people believed in gods that were rather like us. They felt lust, greed, and jealousy; they had babies, fought wars, interfered in the deeds of humans. It is this world that our author re-introduces us to in Circe. As an undergraduate, I majored in archaeology so I had considerable exposure to the ancient Greek myths. I know they are attested from a number of sources but those sources do not contradict each other. Circe, the sorceress from the Odyssey, is the main character in this book. While the exchange from the Odyssey, where Circe turns Odysseus’s crew into pigs and is later persuaded to turn them into themselves again, is included, the story is a biography of the sorceress’s life, meticulously researched from ancient sources. While it could be used merely to learn the myths painlessly, the book is far more ambitious. The author takes a deceptively simple line: she tells the story first person and accepts as a matter of course that Circe, daughter of a titan and a nymph, must be a god herself. She’s immortal. If she’s injured, she heals in minutes. She knows she’s not going to die of natural causes, she’s never even going to catch the flu. Modern readers unfamiliar with Greek myths might find that a little hard to swallow but I was OK with it. You don’t need to know the myths beforehand but it helps you keep track of what’s happening. Once the author decided to approach things this way, she had the opportunity to show us that the philosophers were wrong and the ancient Greeks were onto something. Yes, you probably guessed it – Circe has everything we wish we had and no, she is not happy! Her father, Helios the sun god, is a leading light (pun not intended) in the world of the Immortals, while her mother is a minor divinity. There’s a pecking order among the gods. She’s a nymph rather than a real god, and worse, she has a squeaky voice (like a mortal) and isn’t a beauty. She discovers she’s a witch and in a fit of jealousy administers a potion to a nymph who has seduced her brother. The potion turns the beautiful nymph Scylla into a monster with 6 heads, a dozen octopus legs and a hunger for human flesh. For this “original sin” Circe is exiled to a deserted island. (That’s where she eventually meets Odysseus). It had already occurred to me that immortality has another problem: if you’re the only immortal, everyone you care about dies, leaving you alone. You can’t stand it and eventually you’d rather die than go on. I shouldn’t take credit for this idea since it was developed rather well by J.R.R. Tolkien in Lord of the Rings when Aragorn marries Arwen, an immortal Elven princess, dooming her to an eternity of loneliness after he dies. Well, I suspect the author thought about that but decided not to explore it and that’s why the book ends the way it does. Suffice it to say it’s a happy ending. I should probably say that a ship comes to the island and the captain rapes Circe – that’s why she’s developed the skills to turn men into pigs. (Yes, it might be a feminist allusion that it’s “male chauvinist pigs” she turns into real porkers). This episode did not play realistically to me because I thought a goddess should be much stronger than a human and easily able to beat off the attack. However, it motivates what happens when Odysseus lands on the island some years later so it’s important to the plot. The richness of this book is aided by the fact that the heroine is immortal and therefore can participate in stories that take place centuries apart. She meets Prometheus and witnesses his punishment sympathetically; she’s the midwife at the birth of the Minotaur to her sister Pasiphae. She meets Jason and Medea. Daedalus (engineer of the Labyrinth) presents her with a special loom. She has a son, Telegonus, as a result of her affair with Odysseus; this is attested in sources I am not familiar with. It’s not in the Odyssey. Towards the book’s end, Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus’s wife and son, come to her island and provide the motives that lead her to become mortal. It’s not entirely clear from my reading whether this is a consequence of her killing Scylla (who is still immortal even though she’s a monster, a definite no-no among gods) or a voluntary act of witchcraft as she identifies more with her human relatives. It might be the chronology of the last few chapters doesn’t quite work out; Penelope, Odysseus’s widow, would have been very old indeed by the time the story ends. And when Circe is released from her exile (after blackmailing her father, Helios, by threatening to tell Zeus how she consoled Prometheus) she plans to visit Mycenae and Sparta. I suspect the “Return of the Herakleidae” and the beginning of the Greek Dark Age would have happened by then so there would have been only ruins there. Also, her scenes on board ships show she's a landlubber, and also that she hasn't read much of the literature on ancient ships. She mentions rudders at least twice, and they weren't invented till c. 1300...AD. The action of this book stops around 1000 BC. But those are nits. The book is an amazing tour de force of scholarship and philosophical depth. The comparison between Madeline Miller and Mary Renault is bound to be made so I might as well bring it up. The two authors are similar in overall quality, although their approaches are different. Where Miss Renault tried to make us see with a contemporary eye, and used language that, while still grammatical English, gave the impression of Greek in its word order and choice of words, Ms. Miller uses unaffected, modern English but conveys a subtle, philosophical world-view with it, using the ancient myths as a basis. A modern writer can produce great literature, something I’ve disbelieved most of my life.

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