Circe
2018
- fantasy
- mythology
- historical fiction
- retellings
- gods
- fiction
- paranormal fiction
- fiction, fantasy, historical
- nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2018-04-29
- nyt:audio-fiction=2018-05-13
The story
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--not 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 the mortals she has come to love. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world. ([source][1]) [1]: http://madelinemiller.com/circe/
What it’s like
Lush, sun-struck prose that turns Mediterranean myth into an intimate, first-person murmur: the Greek islands rendered in salt wind, sea-glare, wild herbs and the close smell of a hearth, with the lamplit interiors of a cottage and a palace that feels both grand and cramped. Its vibe is wistful and steadily warm, a slow-burning melancholy with flashes of sharp, witchy menace. It suits a rainy Sunday under a blanket, a long evening alone with a glass of wine, or a long-haul flight where a reader wants to be carried away. The pace is unhurried in its early chapters, gathering momentum as famous figures drift through her island exile and the stakes tighten into a reckoning with the gods. Its emotional arc follows a lonely, overlooked woman learning to claim her own power and choose her loyalties. Violence is present and sometimes harsh, including killings, transformations into animals, sexual assault and a few grim and bloody scenes, but it is rarely gratuitous and lands more as grief and consequence than gore. It is for readers who love myth reimagined through a character's inner life, who want a feminist reclaiming of the stories men told about women, and who enjoy elegant sentences and slow, emotionally rich storytelling.
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