CIRCE by MADELINE MILLER (2018)

Perhaps you remember the name Circe from back when you read parts or all of Homer's The Odyssey in high school or college. She's the one who turned Odysseus's men into swine. Madeline Miller has re-imagined Circe's story and given it a decided feminist twist. Although Circe begins her life almost literally grovelling at the feet of Helios, her sun-god father, and of the other Titan gods, she ends this story in control of her own destiny. Her ages-long journey includes humiliation at the hands of a lover, loneliness, the development of a skill for magic, aiding in the birth of the Minotaur, life as a single mother with a cranky baby, a face-off with the most vengeful of the Olympians, and a final choice to be made based on her hard-won maturity.

Miller includes many of the high points of Greek myth and legend, even bits not connected directly to Circe and what we know of her. We meet Daedalus and his high-flying son Icarus, the murderous Medea, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, the monster Scylla, and, of course, crafty Odysseus. It seems to me that a reader would need to be somewhat familiar with Greek myth to find much of this detail interesting. For someone such as myself, familiar with the subject from having taught six-week units on the subject, it was a fascinating to see how Miller slipped it all in, along with her base story.

I will have to say that this fictional memoir has a distinctly Young Adult flavor, especially in the beginning, but the book improves as it goes along and becomes more a character study than an adventure story.

Circe was named one of the best books of 2018 by many publications, including The Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews. I recommend it especially to those who remember their Greek mythology.