Circe Review: Madeline Miller's Mythology Novel Earns Its Hype

Circe: When Mythology Finally Gets a Protagonist Worth Following

IF YOU READ Greek mythology and ever wondered what happened to all the women — the ones mentioned in passing, the ones blamed for things, the ones who were beautiful and then cursed — Madeline Miller's Circe is your answer.

Miller, who also wrote The Song of Achilles, spent years studying classics at Brown and Yale. It shows. Circe is not a casual retelling. It's a deep excavation of a character who appears briefly in the Odyssey and has been reduced to "the witch who turned men into pigs" ever since.

The Story

Circe is the daughter of Helios, the sun god. Born without divine beauty or power, she is marginalized in the immortal world. She discovers she has the ability to work with herbs and potions — magic that the Olympians find beneath them. She is eventually exiled to the island of Aiaia, where she spends thousands of years, occasionally meeting the heroes, monsters, and figures of Greek mythology who pass through.

That summary makes it sound like a series of mythology checkboxes. It isn't. Miller uses the encounters with Odysseus, Daedalus, Pasiphae, Medea, and others as pressure points to explore Circe's own development: what it means to grow slowly when you're immortal, to make mistakes you have centuries to regret, to be powerful and still feel powerless.

The Writing

Miller's prose is precise and sensory without being ornate. She makes the ancient world feel lived-in rather than decor. The pacing is steady rather than propulsive, which might frustrate readers expecting thriller-style momentum. Those who sink into it will find something more lasting.

Circe has over 180,000 Amazon reviews averaging 4.7 stars. It was a finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction and one of the best-reviewed novels of 2018.

Find Circe, The Song of Achilles, and more mythology fiction at Skriuwer.com.