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Circe
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Circe by Madeline Miller - June 2025
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For pleasure, I hope. If so, where are you going?
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I hope everything works out for them. I'm so jealous, Yellowstone is one of the parks that I absolutely want to see. In the summer and in the winter. I hope you have an amazing time. Take lots of pictures, when you get back you can send me some!
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Gem wrote: "I am not sure how true to the orig..."There's no single original story of Circe; she's only a supporting character in the stories of Odysseus, Medea, and many others.
Madeline Miller gathers all those episodes featuring Circe and turns them around to make Circe the main character--and to imagine them from Circe's point of view. Since Circe's telling these adventures now, you can't always trust what she says or what she thinks about other character's motivations.
The more you happen to know those other stories--and they are only stories (not history), and some of them are tiny fragments, really--the more you may suspect that Miller's Circe is exaggerating certain things, justifying certain things, leaving bits out, "misremembering," or making herself look better (as we do).
So Miller's Circe is an unreliable narrator--but only if you think the other writers of myth were reliable.
For many readers, even if you know a lot of those "original" stories, you might enjoy seeing them through Circe's eyes.
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Lisa wrote: "Well, my library copy traveled all across country with me and never got opened at all. Hoping to get a start this weekend, but might have to resort to listening to the audiobook of it after the fir..."I hope this means that you had a wonderful trip. I think this is the kind of book best read when you have lovely chunks of time to spend with it. (I've read it twice.)
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I was able to start the book on Sunday and am enjoying it so far. I always like getting the viewpoint of characters that have been secondary in other tales.
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There's no single original story of Circe; she's only a supporting character in the stories of Odysseus, Medea, and many others.
Madeline Mille..."
Thanks for the background. I wish I had known this before I read the book the first time. I'm bummed I wasn't able to read with the group, there is a months long wait for the book now.
I'd love to hear further thoughts as some of you are able to read this book. I read it when it first came out because I read any serious (and seriously well-written) retellings I can get my hands on. But I also read it because years ago I made Circe the antagonist in a stage play I wrote for young audiences, and I wanted to see what a serious author would do with her.
(My play was a play for young audiences, a mashup of The Sleeping Beauty and the Frog Prince--and I wanted the same witch to cast both spells--but not a generic witch. I always try not to bore the actor. And of course Circe was already famous for transforming men into animals....)
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Susan, that concept of a play sounds delightful.
Once Upon a Time...
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Welcome to our discussion about Circe by Madeline Miller.
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Summary
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--neither powerful like her father nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power: the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.