Madeline Miller, a Greek and Latin scholar, burst into the literary scene almost a decade back with her award winning “The Song of Achilles” in which she re-examined the Illiad from the point of view of Patroclus.
She continues this journey of viewing epics from those at the margins by choosing to explore the Odyssey through the eyes of the witch-Circe.
Circe is a study of loneliness. A study of the invisibility of women in heroic narratives. We follow, page after page, Circe’s evolution, her reflections. We are immersed in her thoughts. She’s complex and full of contradictions. And through her solitude and her immortality she grows into something the Gods aspire to be- human.
Circe makes a very good narrator, because she often feels outside, not “normal”, so much so that she often comments from an outside point of view, always in the search to figure out who she is. We see her fumbling, questioning herself, failing, making terrible errors, trying again, being betrayed, maturing… Each new experience brings her something new. Her relationship with Odysseus occupies the central place in the novel, but there is so much more to her story than a wandering man with an enormous ego. It is through her prism that myths and heroes are deconstructed one after another. And Miller has enormous fun doing it.
Many characters from Greek myth populate these pages- The Minotaur, Ariadne, Daedalus, Medea, Hermes, Athena…we might know many of these stories and maybe some might be new to us. Madeline Miller makes them come to life before our eyes. The Gods, the places, the landscapes, the architectural inventions, the objects, the animals, the plants, the sea, the mountains, the monsters and the weapons are rendered by this master’s hand with precision and magic. But the most remarkable is still the exploration of the human soul, transposed similarly in men and immortals. Why do we read if not to better grasp the soul and heart of the woman, and the man…
Babel School of Languages 