The witch, Circe, turns up in the Odyssey, famous for turning half of Odysseus’ men into pigs, before changing them back again and giving Odysseus aid in his ever longer journey home from Troy. Circe, her island, and her interactions with Odysseus take up a single chapter of the Odyssey, and from this Miller weaves a much more satisfying tale in this 2018 novel.
Circe is the eldest and least-regarded of four children of the Titan Helios and sea nymph Perse. She grows up as immortal but scorned, her lack of a godlike voice and her timidity mocked by her parents and older sister Pasiphaë and brother Perses. An early encounter with Prometheus and her realisation that the court of the Titans around her father and uncles is cruel and utterly self-absorbed, does not at first spur Circe into sorcery, but it’s the encouragement of her younger brother Aeëtes and her wish to turn her human lover, Glaucos, into an immortal, which set her on the way to becoming a witch. Circe’s spells are, at first, primitive essays, much below what her brothers and sister can do, but once she is exiled to the island of Aiaia for offending Zeus, she spends the following years honing her craft, until a series of events culminating in the death of Odysseus and the arrival of Penelope and Telemachus to her island, set her on an entirely different course.
[Apollo’s] voice was a hymn. His beautiful face showed only the faintest puzzlement. I wanted to tear him with my nails. The gods and their incomprehensible rules. Always there was a reason you must kneel.
Well, this one really hit the sweet spot for me. Although I enjoyed The Song of Achilles, its relentlessly masculine viewpoint rendered its women characters something of ciphers, whereas in Circe, Miller paints wonderfully-drawn portraits of everyone. Since Miller makes Circe Pasiphaë’s sister, she realistically lets Circe travel to Crete (where her sister is married to Minos, mortal son of Zeus), and become entangled in the stories of the Minotaur, Ariadne, and crafty inventor Daedalus. I also really enjoyed Circe’s view of the canonical meeting with Odysseus, and her uncomfortably dual feelings for the man, as well as not shrinking from showing the reader how realistically bitter, paranoid, and unkind a man he became once finally reaching his home. Circe’s canonical relationship to Aeëtes also allows Miller to have her participate in the story of the Golden Fleece (another familiar Greek myth), as Medea’s aunt, and the way Miller so economically paints the unequal relationship between Jason and Medea is wonderfully done.
Miller’s Circe is a fascinating character: immortal but seen as lesser by her (truly awful) family; a powerful witch but still physically weaker than even mortal men; a loving mother who nevertheless suffers excruciating exhaustion when caring for a baby who seemingly will not stop crying; kind to strangers but merciless to those (particularly men) who abuse trust or violate the duty of care for others.
This was wonderful stuff, which I thoroughly recommend.
