It’s satisfying when a book lives up to your expectations after spending years on your reading list. And after so long, Circe by Madeline Miller was everything I wanted it to be.
I’d read Homer’s Odyssey over a decade ago and was curious to rediscover the story of the witch of Aaete who now takes centre stage. With little magic or power of her own, Circe is a lower caste of goddess competing for scraps of power in a world where beauty and duplicity are woman’s only weapons in the halls of the gods. She is determined to understand her fate when she is freed from expectation and banished to the isle of Aaete. Cast aside by her father, Helios, then dismissed by her brother, Perses, and used by the mortal Odysseus, Circe ultimately finds herself alone and discovers a penchant for witchcraft and potions, kind and benevelent until sailors beseige her island and rape her. Circe wreaks revenge and turns them into their true shape as pigs and fashions herself into myth as the witch of Aaates. And her true journey begins.
Miller’s prose is much like her protagonist’s plight, enchanting and goddess-like as she takes us on a thrilling journey and exploration of myth and monsters.
This is the story of one woman’s journey of self discovery in defiance of gods and men, where patriarchy is fought, echoing our times with the me too movement which rocked society, and proves that not all fates are predetermined.