July Review: 'Circe' by Madeline Miller

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Book: Circe, Madeline Miller

Publication date: 2018

WCRG Meeting: 17 July 2019

Rating: 6.1


Miller’s Circe is a retelling of the story of Circe, Witch of Aiaia from Greek mythology. Circe only appears as a minor character in these original stories - the best known is The Odyssey - which gives Miller the freedom to freely re-imagine Circe and her story. 

The group was split on this book, many agreed that it was a fairy tale or fantasy book, however the split lines were along if people liked this or not. Another divide in the group was between readers finding the novel quite boring, whereas others really enjoyed the book. It was interesting to see that there wasn’t really a correlation on what members thought about The Song of Achilles, Miller's previous novel.

Many liked the character development of Circe throughout the book, but again, others did not see much development of the character.

A question asked was, where the myth stopped and Miller’s re-telling began. The book also inspired some members to go back to reading some classical myths again.

Many enjoyed the exploration on the theme of immortality; although it did put you off of wanting to be immortal! Another interesting theme was ‘divinity’ and what it means to be divine. Although unfortunately this was not much further explored in the book.

Many liked the use of language, although sometimes there was an overuse of new, odd words and also some very archaic sentences, which were trying to mirror the myths.

A discussion ensued on why the author picked Circe as a character. There are not many female main characters in the original Greek mythology, also the book used ‘motherhood’ as a main theme, something which is not much explored in classical mythology.

Two other important themes explored in the book was class and the different levels of gods, as well as ecological aspects, nature and the experience of nature/environment.

Below the review we got from one of our overseas members who, together with her friend, sums up the main issues discussed by our group in two paragraphs:

“I loved the book - I read it in two sittings over the course of just over 24 hours. It completely gripped me and I loved the fast pace, tripping from one event to the next.
I think that Miller did a very good job of drawing the disparate narrative strands of Greek myth and tragedy together into one cogent whole. I appreciated the jolts of familiarity as we encountered familiar figures from the myths through Circe.

A friend of mine criticised the book for a lack of depth and for its mere recitation of events, but I didn’t find this at all. I think there was character development and introspection and that any more interrogation of Circe’s mind and motivations would have been too much of a departure from the original stories. The myths are more like fairy tales in style and so prioritise story over character development.”

The book received a score of 6.1 with scores ranging from 3 to 10 (definitely a Marmite novel then!).