The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s first novel, a re-imagining of the Iliad, was both a bestseller and a literary tour de force, winning the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012.
Having claimed mythology as her territory, Miller – a Classics scholar – has returned to that fertile field for her second novel, Circe, this time taking her text from the Odyssey.
In Miller's version however, it is the witch Circe, freed from the confinement of Homer's tale, who is transformed into the heroine of the story. With her words, Miller gives Circe her own, distinctive, voice.
“When I was born,” Circe begins her tale, “the name for what I was did not exist.” Circe finds her powers in response to years of humiliation at the hands of her predetory Titan family, her vicious cousins the Olympian gods, and even humans, who all see her as as their rightful prey.
Circe's adventures makes for absorbing reading. Written in a terse, glowing prose well-matched to her source material, there is nothing antiquated about this Circe or her travails. Miller has wrought a magic worthy of her heroine, transforming an archetype of female subjugation into a paean to empowerment.
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