Circe is a new novel from April 2018 written by Madeline Miller, a classicist and teacher who won the Orange Prize For Fiction, for her first novel The Song of Achilles. I think so highly of Circe that I already went ahead and ordered The Song of Achilles from the library server.
Circe is a a great modern take on mythology. We've all read mythology as kids. Probably when teachers forced it upon us in grade school or middle school, maybe even high school. Circe is the daughter of Helios (sun god and Titan) and an unimportant naiad named Perse. The story is told from Circe's point of view, the first person. Its quite a stunning tale.
The novel starts with Circe as a young naiad, living in the halls of the gods. The beginning has a young mind framework, you get the sense that yes Circe is a god but she also started off not unlike humans, young, immature, and afraid of the world. The first couple chapters makes Circe look like a teenage girl. At first I was thinking, am I reading some sort of classical mythological young adult novel?
The book kicks off plot-wise once Circe notices that Promethus (a Titan, a god) has been punished hardcore. He was caught helping humans, teaching them the art of fire and culture. His punishment was being chained outside and having his liver pecked at by birds for eternity. Once his liver regenerated, the birds would come back the next day and do it all over again. Talk about harsh.
Circe goes out and helps Prometheus but once Zeus finds out she's helped him Circe gets cast out from the halls of the gods, her punishment being imprisonment on her own island, which is where the common tales of Circe stem from.
Most people know Circe as a witch who lives on an island and pretends to help lost sailors on their wayward travels. Then she turns them into pigs using magic, otherwise known in the gaming world as casting polymorph, pretty neat trick. But Circe is shown in this novel as not just being an evil witch.
She started turning men into pigs because she was sexually assaulted by the first men who came to her island, which brings to mind the issue of rape in modern society. There's a feminist tone to Circe's actions once she interacts with the mortal world, man in particular.
Another strong feminist tone in the novel is when Circe becomes a mother to a mortal son. She exclaims that she will do anything for her son, including claw her eyes out. She lives for her son and loves her more than anything. In motherhood we cannot see Circe as just a witch who plagues men. She is a loving character, much like mortal mothers are their kids.
Circe's love for her son is symbolic for the maternal love of mothers. It made me think about my relationship to my mother, weather good or bad ultimately a mother does whatever they can for you because they love you. Even their mistakes and bad actions are acts of love. Of course making Circe a loving mother humanizes her and turns her into a good witch, which isn't the usual myth tale.
And then of course there's plenty of other interesting stuff that happens. Circe turns a mortal into a god using magic, but once the man, Glaucos decides to marry another unimportant naiad instead of her, despite the fact that they were lovers when he was mortal, Circe gets made and uses magic to turn Scylla, the unimportant naiad into a multi-headed monster, who goes on to plague man in the seas for generations. Typical bickering, even among gods.
A cool part that I enjoyed in particular was when Circe swam to the bottom of the ocean and met with an ancient sea god. They come to an agreement of some sort where Circe got to keep his tail, which was a weapon of poison, of godly destruction. Circe later uses this weapon to fight against Scylla. The weapon turns Scylla to stone.
What makes Circe such a great novel is that the prose is elegant and sharp. There's classical meaning to terms and phrases. There's modern every day exclamations. The story itself feels like an eternity, the life of Circe, a goddess. You get the sense that this is what a god's life could really be, thousands of years old and still feuding with your relatives over petty things.
The first person view for the narrative plays a key role in this book's success. Because everything is told by Circe in the first person you get to understand all the different nuances of the character in question. We begin to understand Circe's thoughts and actions, and vice versa. In this point of view we can relate more to Circe, turning her into a good witch despite turning men to pigs with spells.
The novel reads incredibly easy. Not that its kiddie stuff or young adult by any means. More that the writing isn't complicated or busy, just technical enough to be of mythological historical importance. But not overbearing with the technicalities of it, and even offering new slants and points of views within the story.
It was a great read, I recommend it to anyone who wants to read something different and very good.
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