Circe

“Circe,” Madeline Miller, Back Bay Books, 2018, 385 pages
Reviewed by Angela Allen, Aug. 7, 2020

Whew! If you love Greek mythology but aren’t clear on the good gods and bad actors, you will be by the end of this fat novel.

Circe, the centerpiece character, is an alluring witch, the golden daughter of the god, Helios and nymph, Perse. She is banished to an island and lives alone, but she discovers her voice in her magic and spells. And she’s neither hermit nor prude. She is powerful.

Because she’s a demigod, she lives forever and sees centuries of mortal life. She has an affair with Daedalus, the familiar mortal craftsman who designed the labyrinth to jail the flesh-eating Minotaur (he desires a regular feast of several young men from Athens). Daedalus made the wax wings for his son, Icarus, who dies from flying too close to the sun.

Later, Circe falls in love with Odysseus, and he with her (she turns his men into pigs at the early part of the affair) when he stops at her island, exhausted, making his way back from the Trojan War. Circe has a son with him, though he doesn’t know that.

She eventually falls in love with Telemachus, the son of Penelope and Odysseus, with whom she has children, and she befriends Penelope, a world-class weaver. Circe is not a woman without gravitas, sex drive, or room for others, though she has no problem performing spells at crucial times when things don’t suit her.

Are you keeping this all straight? Fortunately author Madeline Miller, a classics scholar, included a “Cast of Characters” glossary at the end of the book so you can keep the Olympian and Titan divinities sorted from the mortals and monsters. Sometimes it feels as if you are traveling an arduous and endless journey alongside Odysseus. But Miller creates a such a lush adventurous atmosphere that you are transported into fables and fairytales — and, well, into myths.

Miller will be featured among the authors at Portland Literary Arts in the 2020-21 season.