Circe

After seeing Circe as the Goodread readers choice for best fantasy book of 2018, I knew I would need to check it out. The story itself follows Circe, a Greek goddess, nymph, and daughter of Helios. The prose is also striking. Each scene feels epic in nature somehow – partially from prose, but also because they're populated with familiar characters - Charybdis, Odysseus, Daedalus and too many others to name.

If you have an interest in Greek Mythology you will enjoy Circe immensely. Madeline Miller knows here classics and weaves a tale of many different gods and men together into something completely new and original while staying true to the characters. It's a retelling of the same history, but from a new point of view – shedding light on areas often passed over. If you're interested in Greek Mythology, you will likely love this one as much as I did.

Best book I've read this year so far, so good I read it twice. Exciting and heartbreaking. Couldn't put it down!

My bestie recommended this back to me when it came out, and I have no idea why I didn't just read it immediately! She and I are literary "twin flames" (thanks, Megan Fox, for the parlance), so she was 100% accurate in her educated guess I would love this. 10/10; no notes. Read the last third really slowly because I didn't want it to end!! Epic, intimate, searing.

I don't think this quote from the final pages can be captured in its full glory out of context, but it was rattling around in my head for days afterward and came up in another book club when someone was talking about the tightrope between nihilistic despair and hope: "A breeze would blow them over, and the world is filled with more than breezes: diseases and disasters, monsters and pain in a thousand variations.... How can I live on beneath such a burden of doom?.... Circe, he says, it will be alright.... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive."

I don't know why it took me so long to read this but I am so glad I did.

Beautiful through and through. The Odyessy from another point of view. Madeline Millers sentence structure is just as engaging as her plots. A masterpiece.

Really enjoyed this book!

Det roliga med Millers ”Circe” är att jag älskar den trots att jag normalt har väldigt svårt för retellings av gamla myter och berättelser. Don't get me started om kung Arthur. Men ”Circe”... antiken har aldrig varit bättre.

Dropped after getting about halfway through. Circe is somehow written as a super dull character who lets things happen to her constantly despite her cool witch powers and then just sleeps with a bunch of dudes. Gods, goddesses and other important mythical figures are name dropped constantly without any real purpose. There's no sense of time because she's divine I guess and it was difficult for me to get an idea of what was happening when. Could not bring myself to care about her or what was happening

This was a fun reworking of classical Greek myths, keeping the basic elements but stripping the silly heroics.

Fuck, this is fantastic.

Wasn't the best read ever and it was slow in places but worth the read

Enthralled, I would describe myself as enthralled while reading this. I found myself putting it down toward the end simply because I did not want to finish it. The storytelling in Circe is amazing. It's a page turner, full of stories. And, I must confess, the Greek Gods have never done anything for me. They are always so cruel and so skimpy on logic, but here we see them through Circe's eyes and they just transform into the monsters they actually are. Here is the thing, Circe just isn't like them, and I loved her for it. I think I will go back and read The Song of Achilles in the fall, despite having no care in the world in reading about Achilles.

Note to self: read Calypso and Circe back to back-not on purpose. And, of course, Calypso is not about Calypso anyway.

Postponing this one for a bit. Need to be in the mood for it again.

Loved this one so much I gave it a second read a year later.

If you give this book less than 5 stars, I don't think we've read the same book

Een heel fijne reis door de oude mythen, vanuit het gezichtspunt van een “bijfiguur” in die mythen. Dat geeft heerlijk vileine observaties van al die alpha-mannetjes onder de goden en titanen:

“Talk of Prometheus' punishment scarcely lasted out the moon. A dryad stabbed one of the Graces with her hairpin. My uncle Boreas and Olympian Apollo had fallen in love with the same mortal youth.”

Circe is toch iets meer dan slechts een nimf als blijkt dat ze toverkrachten heeft. Als ze op gegeven moment de nimf Scylla in het bekende zeskoppige monster veranderd heeft vinden Helios en Zeus het wel genoeg, en ze wordt verbannen naar een eiland waar ze nooit meer van af zal mogen.

“If anyone came, I would only be able to scream, and a thousand nymphs before me knew what good that did.”

Daar spoelen nog wel eens zeelieden aan die nog nooit van #metoo hebben gehoord, maar daar maakt ze korte metten mee – “The truth is, men make terrible pigs.”

En dan landt Odysseus, komt er een kind, wil Athena wraak en is er opeens een heleboel meer om voor te leven...

“In those months I had spent with Odysseus, I had thought I'd learned some tricks of mortal living. Three meals a day, the fluxes, the washing and cleaning. Twenty swaddling cloths I had cut, and believed myself wise. But what did I know of mortal babies? Aeëtes was in arms less than a month. Twenty cloths got me only through the first day.”

It is rare for a book to pull me in from the first page, but the elegant flow of the words and the imagery it provided had me hooked from the get-go. I was drawn to the vivid descriptions, and the way the words flowed really provided a wonderful reading experience. I love both history and Greek mythology as well as character-driven books that explore both humanity and the self. Circe is a Greek goddess, daughter of a Titan, and an outcast in many ways. We get to experience what humanity is through the lens of her divinity, and her struggles both internal and external throughout the book.

It did get a bit slow in the middle but picked up again. I enjoy books that cause you to think, and that can have a deeper meaning beyond just the story. Circe explores themes of identity, power, self-discovery, and also pushing beyond limits imposed by others.

A couple of bright moments, but not for me. The prose is very matter of fact, flat and dissociated. This has its pros of framing Circe as eternal, however doing over the entire 400 pages with less than 5 locations at play (she’s in exile!) makes it very grating to read.

This was very enjoyable. For some reason I was expecting something along the lines of magical realism, which hasn't really landed for me. Coupled with praises this has gathered I was quite sure I wouldn't be able to give this a proper go.

Really enjoyed the characters in all of the crazy ranges we get to see and meet. Circe herself was really well done. I enjoyed the writing style and the story was interesting. May help that you sort of have a feel for the characters from other works, but still well done here.

The philosophical ponderings of what life and family are about were well integrated and interesting parts of the styling and storytelling.

Beautiful writing that perfectly captures Circe's duality of straddling the worlds of gods and mortals.

In the early chapters, where Circe's life is filled with the unknowable whims and indescribable wonders of Olympians, Titans, nymphs and monsters, so much of her narration is deeply abstract and metaphorical. As if to say that only poetry and high prose could come close to conveying that world to mortal minds.

Then, after Circe's exile gives way to a wide-ranging retelling of The Odyssey and The Telegony from Circe's point of view, the narration slows - where pages once covered centuries, eventually we slowly cover years, then seasons, then days - and becomes more plain, less abstract, more dialogue heavy. But, that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of fantastic turns of phrase, even here.

It makes sense for Circe's story to stretch into the Telegony and reach for the stories of Telegonus and Telemachus, but, as with the controversy of the Telgony itself, it does represent a pity at the same time that it not only robs Odysseus of his “happy ending”, but robs Circe of loving a man who deserved it. Her relationship with Telemachus never feels as rich, deep or earned, but by the end, he turns out to be the only truly good man she ever met. Sadly, the story does not really interrogate this fact.

But then, it is told from Circe's point of view, and Circe is never shy of acknowledging her own failures and flaws. So perhaps to her own mind, the Telegony's Odysseus is all the better match for the woman who birthed Scylla out of spite anyway.

As a fan of Greek mythology, I really enjoyed this book. I feel as though I can't put into words what I liked about it.

I found it was beautifully written, I loved Circe's fierceness and her ability to have compassion when needed. Her growth during her lifetimes, her ability to be alone and her ability to lean on others at times was wonderful to read.

uh oh, too much book

Miller's writing is beautiful as expected and while I said this in the Song of Achilles review it bears repeating. It takes a special type of talent to take a story we know and tell it in a way that captivates. She has that talent in spades.

She takes some liberties of course, but in doing so Circe is given agency and becomes a multi-faceted character who questions, rages, sinks into despair, and builds herself anew across her immortal life. I daresay I even enjoyed it a bit more than Song of Achilles, though I hold both in high regard for different reasons.

I still think about this book sometimes (months after finishing it)

A book about a strong lady, daughter of a God and yet, not valued by the men or the women in her life - mostly ignored, often ridiculed for her appearance, her actions, even her voice - but one who endured. If one thing can define her, it would be endurance. I read up on the myth of Circe once I started getting into this book. The author has explained most of the stories convincingly. It was definitely a good read.