Hello and welcome to Spinster's Library. I'm
Claudia and today I'm reviewing the novel
Circe by Madeline Miller. This is a Greek
mythology retelling that was published in
2018 and follows the Greek goddess and witch
Circe, from her childhood in the halls of
her father, the sun god Helios, to her discovery
of sorcery and then her exile on a lonely
island as well as her involvement with Odysseus
and many other Greek mythological figures.
I went into this novel with a very basic understanding
of Greek mythology. Pretty much what I learned
in school plus Disney's Hercules. That's as
far as my knowledge of Greek mythology was
before I started the book. Happy to say that
I am now aware of some more Greek myths that
I wasn't before then, but basically I just
wanted to tell you that I didn't go into this
book as some sort of expert or even particularly
an enthusiast of Greek mythology. The first
thing that struck me when I started reading
this book was the really beautiful writing
style. The author really managed to create
a style that felt very classical and ancient
and timeless, but at the same time kind of
readable and direct. This is a very introverted
book, it is told from the first person, it
is super slow moving, very slow-paced. Even
in scenes that are full of action, you know,
scenes that involve fighting and monsters
and battles and gods, they all have a kind
of quietness about them that I find very striking.
And for me that worked really well, because
that's exactly the sort of novel that I love,
I like a slow-moving story. I don't really
mind if a story stands absolutely still in
its time and place and nothing much happens,
and there are certainly a few passages in
this book that are like that. But for me that
worked really well, but I wanted to bring
it up because I know that people who enjoy
faster paced plots and faster paced novels
are going to find difficulty with that aspect
of the book. The first half of Circe I read
very quickly, I think within one day I was
half-way through. It drew me right in. And
that was partly because there is a trope in
this novel that I absolutely love and that
is the "woman alone in the wilderness" trope.
My favourite parts are really when Circe is
exiled on her lonely island and she spends
the first, I mean, years - centuries - who
even knows, time is a bit timey-wimey in the
book. But she spends the first amount of time
on this island all by herself, and I love
that idea, I love that trope. It was such
a pleasure to read about a woman all by herself,
in a big house on her own private island,
that is full of these natural wonders, as
she lives there and works there and discovers
her witchcraft and, you know, transforms animals
and has a pet lioness and spends her days
weeding the garden. That - I loved that, that
was right up my alley. The character of Circe
is strangely relatable, considering that she
is a centuries old goddess and I am not. But
then, if I was, would I tell you I was? Hm.
Anyway, what made her so relatable to me was
her insecurities that were based on what I
think of is an incredibly real feeling of
not understanding something that everyone
else gets, of feeling left out of a shared
common knowledge, of a shared common culture.
I really think this is something that everyone
can relate to, at least to some degree. In
a lot of books, when we have female main characters
that are insecure, a lot of the insecurities
might be about their looks or about their
success, about their romantic achievements,
and I've never quite managed to connect to
those main characters on the same level as
I connect to the insecurities in Circe. When
the gods around her, her family, laugh about
a joke, or they talk about something that
everyone really knows, but she's left out
of that, I found that much deeper hitting
on a sort of deeply human level and I think
that everyone who is going to be reading this
book has been in the situation at least once,
where you feel like you've been left out of
something, and it might not even be an intentional
being left out. It might just be that you
haven't picked up on something that everyone
else knows. And that is a lot of the learning
that Circe has to do. It's about overcoming
those insecurities and becoming secure in
herself and building her own knowledge and
then deciding who to share that knowledge
with. So Circe overcomes these feelings of
inadequacy, but only after she is being forced
out of her family, her halls of gods, and
onto her own lonely island, where she has
no one for company, but the occasional visiting
god and the aforementioned pet lioness. I
have to say that I found the last third of
the novel, when we get to the part that is
a retelling of the Odyssey, a lot less engaging
than the first two thirds. I really enjoyed
reading about Circe alone on this island,
as I've said, tending to the animals, practicing
her witchcraft, and then when Odysseus gets
involved, I found that I lost interest in
the story a little bit. And it's not because
I didn't enjoy him as a character or that
I didn't enjoy the plot from his arrival on
the island. I think maybe there was just a
disconnect between this introspective, inward-looking,
quiet prose - Minerva, you okay? Where was
I? [laughs] Yeah, so, from the moment that
the island is populated by more people, um,
there is a disconnect between the quiet, introspective,
lonely prose and the plot. The prose works
really well when there isn't much dialogue
to it. When it really is Circe's thoughts
and Circe's perception and Circe's descriptions
of the life around her. As soon as dialogue
becomes a bigger part of the narrative, there
was a little bit - I found it a little bit
grating. It's hard to describe, it was a very
minuscule thing, definitely did not overall
detract from the book, but it was something
I noticed. The ending, however, was absolutely
beautiful, that last chapter... so stunningly
written, that overall it left me with a real
feeling of enjoyment of the book. Like, I
totally get the hype about Circe now, I've
not read anything quite like this book. Especially
the prose, it was just so beautiful, and the
themes in the book are kind of subtle. You
know, it's... I've heard this often described
as this great feminist work of fiction, and
I suppose what makes this a great feminist
work of fiction is not the whole "turning
men into pigs" thing, which does happen and
it's quite fun. But I guess people find the
idea of having a female main character that
is just allowed to be her own person kind
of ground-breaking. Sad that that's the case.
There are a lot of themes in Circe that really
spoke to me. This whole idea of exploring
your own insecurities, finding your self-worth,
gaining control of your own life, and ultimately
the idea of being okay with being by yourself
and being okay with not moving, with being
still, standing still and being in one place.
All very interesting, made me think a lot
and I really enjoyed this book. It did a little
bit make me want to move to a remote mediterranean
island, tame a lioness and transform some
men into pigs. So finally, I want to say that
I gave this book four stars, I really enjoyed
it and I will recommend it to anyone except
if you know of yourself that you really dislike
slow-paced prose. If you really hate slow-paced
novels, you're not going to get much out of
this. Otherwise, give it a shot, never mind
how much you know or don't know about Greek
mythology. I found myself googling a lot of
the names and myths in this novel after I'd
finished it, but it really wasn't necessary
for my understanding of the story. I'm definitely
going to explore more of Madeline Miller's
writing, I know that a lot of people really
liked her book Song of Achilles and if it's
anything like this, then I think I will enjoy
that one just as much. So let me know your
thoughts of Circe, if you have read it, which
I presume you have, because everyone in the
world seems to have read this book before
I did. Thank you for watching, bye.
