Why it’s essential
Imbued with the golden warmth of Perdita Weeks's voice, 's rich, remarkably human depiction of Circe rivals the deepest of literature’s great characters.
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What is Circe about?
A complex and nuanced retelling of ancient myths, is the story of the titular goddess, daughter of the sun god Helios and the sea nymph Perse. In Greek mythology, Circe is best known for her role in The Odyssey. When Odysseus lands on the island of Aiaia, where she lives as sorceress, she turns his men into pigs and keeps them captive for a year. Madeline Miller's reimagining is a breathtaking character study that follows Circe from her childhood among the gods through her exile to Aiaia, where she slowly grows into herself.
Editors review
I loved Madeline Miller's debut novel The Song of Achilles so much that I was hesitant to pick up Circe at first. The Song of Achilles is basically a perfect novel as far as I'm concerned; how could anything else Miller wrote even compare? But I was too curious not to give it a chance, so I read it a few months after it came out in 2018. I can still remember where I was when I finished it for the first time (sitting cross-legged on my bed, sobbing, late afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows). I knew, as I read the now-beloved last paragraph through my tears, that I had just read something that would become a part of my very being. This retelling of an ancient Greek myth about a powerful witch who brews potions and clashes with gods and monsters is still the truest book about what it feels like to be a human woman in this world that I know. This is the power of stories.
Three months after reading Circe for the first time, I listened to the audiobook. This is something I often do when I fall in love with a book—I reread it on audio as soon as possible, desperate to fall that much more deeply into its world. Listening to Perdita Weeks's extraordinary performance is when I truly fell in love with Circe. I have listened to it every year since. This is a ritual I cannot imagine my life without.
At heart, is a story about becoming—becoming a woman, becoming a human, become a person who belongs to a place. While living in the halls of her father, she falls in love with a mortal, a fisherman named Glaucos. Devastated by his mortality, she uses for the first time the magic of transformation that will define much of her life. She turns him into a god, but instead of returning her love, he falls for a nymph, Scylla. Circe, in rage and jealousy, turns Scylla into a dreadful monster. For this, and for her use of witchcraft, she is exiled to the island of Aiaia. It is alone on this isolated island that her true work begins. Over centuries, she studies herb lore and witchcraft. She becomes powerful. She tangles with some of the age's greatest heroes, slyest gods, and deadliest monsters—Hermes, Daedalus, the Minotaur, and, of course, Odysseus.
