“I Will Do As I Please:” A Review of Circe by Madeleine Miller
This book was an absolutely beautiful read. Reimagining Circe’s story so that she stood at the center of the narrative was so powerful, and the way that Madeline Miller writes her prose is so poetic that it felt reminiscent of an old Epic.
The writing style of this book is one that creates space between the reader and the protagonist–we are reading this as mere mortals, and Circe makes it clear that there are things that mortals will never understand. However, she still becomes a character that I loved reading about. She has flaws and desires and she feels intense passion throughout the story–passionate guilt, love, lust, fear, and protectiveness. Anything she feels she feels in full. However, I did find myself looking up to her character as opposed to trying to relate to her, and I haven’t quite figured out yet if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Circe isn’t really a wholly relatable character despite the relatable parts of her story. The most relatable moment in the book I would say is the ending, but I won’t go into that because, you know, spoilers. As a whole I loved her character, but I felt a distance from her that made me like the book a little bit less than I may have.
While the plot of the novel is a rich reimagination of Circe’s mythology, it could be slow moving at times and the pacing was not my favorite. I got halfway through the book, got a little bit bored, and returned to it over a month later. Although a book doesn’t have to be constant action to be good, the long stretches of pages where next to nothing was really happening made me lose interest. However, because the prose was so beautiful, I did find myself drawn to come back to Circe to finish reading. If Miller’s prose style was not so incredible though, the pacing of the plot most likely would have driven me off. I do want to note that I’m not someone who is hugely into Greek mythology, so the plot may be more entrapping to someone who, for example, loves the Percy Jackson series or knows a lot about various Greek myths.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. Circe is a wonderfully written retelling of a character’s story that has been pushed to the side for far too long. It isn’t the most intense thrilling and entrapping book, but it is the kind of book that you can sit down with at the end of a long day and use to escape the real world for a while.
