Circe

Circe
by Madeline Miller
★★★★★

Circe is a witch on a remote island when Odysseus meets her on his journey home in Homer's Odyssey. In Miller’s reimagining she’s a complicated woman with heartaches and hopes of her own. She’s no longer a footnote in someone else’s story.

We meet Circe as a child in the halls of her Titan father. She never fits into his world of petty jealousy and swift anger. It's not until she's exiled to an island that she begins to figure out who she is. I loved the descriptions of the world where she lives. Whether she's digging in her garden or riding in her father's chariot above the earth, the descriptions bring each scene to life so vividly.

It’s a story of loneliness and longing. The beautiful language draws you in immediately. If you know any Greek mythology the characters will be familiar, but Miller gives them new depth. Just as she did in The Song of Achilles, she brings that ancient world alive and I couldn’t put it down.

BOTTOM LINE: Circe is such a wonderfully complex character. She is full of flaws and selfishness along side guilt and empathy. In this book there are no clear villains and heroes, just characters full of life and contradictions. I can’t wait to return to her world again one day.

“It is not fair,” I said. “It cannot be.”
“Those are two different things,” my grandmother said.

“In a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”

“Within him was an ocean’s worth of grief, which could only be stoppered a moment, never emptied.”

“It is youth’s gift not to feel its debts.”

“Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.”

The Aeneid

The Aeneil

by Virgil

★★★★

After reading The Odyssey and The Iliad I was hungry for the next piece of the puzzle. The Aeneid is the continuation of the story of the Trojan War. Unlike the first two books this one wasn’t written by the Greek poet Homer. It was written centuries later by Virgil, a Roman, who modeled his writing style after the Greeks.

The story follows Aeneas, a Trojan who travels to Italy after the war and becomes one of Rome’s founders. Early sections in the book cover the storming of Troy and the betrayal with the infamous Trojan horse. I loved those sections and they worked much better for me than the later chapters on the war in Latium.

One interesting aspect of this book is the Roman names of the Gods vs the Greek names. After reading half a dozen books on Greek mythology last year it was strange to hear of Juno and Neptune instead of Zeus and Poseidon. I also read The Mark of Athena around the same time and that book focuses heavily on the different names of the gods. I would highly recommend reading it alongside this one if you like the Percy Jackson series.

BOTTOM LINE: I’m so glad I was finally able to read the thrilling account of the Trajan horse. I was so disappointed to discover that wasn’t in The Iliad. Other sections of the book dragged a bit for me, but it’s a crucial part of the story. If you love learning about Greek and Roman mythology then this one is a must and it helps bridge the gap between the two nations’ cultures.