Circe
by Madeline Miller
Genres: Mythology, Fantasy, Fiction,Magical,Mystical, Sorcery, Witchcraft, Imaginative, good prose, 2021-read
Rating: 4.5/5 💓💓
Circe is a witch. She spends most of her time collecting, grinding and boiling herbs, precious minerals from soil and casting spells of magic. Madeline Miller has done the same thing in her lovely book. She has poured different elements of mythology, history, fantasy, suspense and imagination into a giant couldron and prepared a savory concoction - with an occassional bitter taste. Ha ha ha 😂😂😂😂
I doubt if I could call this book the regular things - like "amazing", "gripping". I think more apt terms would be "amusing","interesting","magical". It's loosely based on multiple Greek mythology stories balancing them on one pivotal point,Circe. At the backdrop of it, we have a woman, a goddess,a nymph who comes into her own power after being treated worthless for a long time. Ancient Greek gods are shown in their true beauty,valor and "spirit" - most of them are tricky, wilful and ruthless - more so towards the ones that most trust/believe in them. They play their games,have their laughs and care not an ounce for others who aren't "themself". Circe is an outcast from this circle of gods - she can't find a common ground with them nor wishes for their eternal life or unfading beauty,riches - what would she be willing to do to end something that can't be ended - her "godliness" ?
Circe is one of the four children born to sun god Helios and a sea nymph. While Helios had fathered many others, these children are different because they could access 'witchctaft' i.e. they are witches. Circe since birth was treated with indifference by her mother. She is a peculiar child - kept to herself, doted on her father, worshipped the ground he tread on and stayed away from her bullies/bullying siblings. Once she meets a handsome, yound man Gloucos whom she falls passionately in love with. Believing he is equally in love/loyal to her, she turns him into a sea god using flowers grown from blood of an Olympian God. But Gloucos gets carried away with his newly found power and starts favoring another sea nymph. Moved by jealousy and rage, Circe turns the nymph into a monstrous sea creature Scylla - who devours unsuspecting travellers over seas. Circe makes a clear breast of the affair to her father hoping for his forgiveness but he connives with Zeus and casts her off to a remote island - Aiaia - for eternity. Betrayed and discarded by the one she most adored/loved/trusted, Circe makes friends with animals,plants and herbs in her new "home". Occassional outsiders/humans visit her island and after experiencing the horrors of her "naivete", she comes to distrust them and turn the cunning ones into "pigs" in her sty. She becomes the mother to Telegonus whose father is the great,legendary Odysseus. The story/narrator's perspective strips him of all his fame/glory and shows his cunning, wilfulness and restless brutality. So how does Circe convince her uncaring father to let her off her chains? What does she do to protect her son from the gods who want him for their self interest? What life does she choose at the end - for herself, her son and those that matter to her deeply?
I read her 'The song of Achilles' a long time ago and the song still resonates with me. I had become an ardent fan to the hero that she created out of myth and imagination. Madeline Miller might be one of the few authors of our time that has the ability to make up stories that have an outlasting effect - becoming "modern classics" so to speak. I eagerly await all her upcoming works! 👀👋👌👌👌
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