Circe, Madeline Miller

"When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins."

Opening lines of Circe by Madeline Miller

But Circe was not like them, not like her mother, Perse, daughter of Oceanos, guardian of fresh waters, not like her father, Helios, mighty titan and god of the sun, not like her sisters, "sweet-tempered and golden." Circe, miraculously brought to full-bodied life by Madeline Miller, classics scholar and masterful storyteller, is unique; Circe is possessed of singular talents, a sorceress, an enchantress, famously depicted in Homer's epic The Odyssey, as the witch who turned shipwrecked sailors to swine. In this lush, stunning Circe does, indeed, bewitch Odysseus, and he lives, of his own free will, with her on island, the one to which she was banished. In Miller's telling, Circe's empathy and goodness, as well as her power, is on full display. Miller's has a firm grasp of her subject matter and she cleverly submerges the reader in the lineage and story-lines of ancient myths and literature without wholly changing them or it being arduous. You're getting a classical education whilst being swept away in an epic and tragic love story. Stunning and sublime.

Circe
By Madeline Miller
Back Bay Books. 416 pp. $16.99