More of the Same - Circe by Madeline Miller

Like Miller’s previous work, The Song Of Achilles, Circe is a reimagining of a Greek myth. Circe, the daughter of Helios, best known for turning Odysseus’s men into pigs and keeping him on her island for a year.

We are beginning to experience something of a flood of greek retellings, no doubt due in part to Miller’s previous success. Like the others, Miller’s story is something of a rehabilitation for the character - rather than the beautiful sorceress of a thousand Pre-Raphaelite paintings who presides over her cauldron while impressively managing not to set her drapey skirt on fire, we have an immortal girl, vulnerable in her humanity, ill used by her family and eventually banished to the island of Aeaea.

Circe is an interesting subject who I largely know as a part of another person’s story, and Miller creates a terrific plot which illustrates just how wrong I am about that. Miller’s not just creating this witch, she is creating a pantheon of titans, gods and mortals. It is not just Circe’s story, it is the story of her sister, Pasiphae, mother of the minotaur; of her brother, Aeetes, protector of the golden fleece - at least until Medea, Circe’s niece assists in it’s thievery.

As far as mythology is concerned, Circe is a woman who sits alone on an island so she can be a small part of a great man’s story. Miller gives us a woman whose life and choices have led her to these moments. The abilities she has and the knowledge she imparts, she has earned.

But despite this, there’s no getting away from the fact Circe’s story is one of a woman who largely sits on an island. She is a character searching for a connection - at the beginning from her family, then from a man she loves, and then… well. It’s a story of character development rather than of action. At times, it feels a little bit as though things happen precisely to get away from the fact she is just sitting on an island.

The book is written in the same first person style as Miller’s first book, which, if I’m honest, I find rather annoying. Obviously, I’m being extremely unfair here; if I hadn’t read Achilles I wouldn’t have anything to complain about, but I have and I fear it shows Miller’s writing up. This is, after all, a first person narration - Circe and Patroclus are very different people and yet they have the same heavy fatalism of a story told from the point of when everything has already happened. I’m not the biggest fan of it, but I think it works better here, from this character.

As with Achilles, I’m also interested to know more about why Miller made the choices she did about the narrative. The Odysseus she has here is a very different creature to the one of the Trojan war and it’s an interesting change. I did not like it when I read it, and I felt it too much of a jolt from the character I had loved previously. Considering it now, I’m honestly not sure. Miller reframes what we think we know of the stories, but Odysseus’s part is small here and the reframing of his choices and motivations is fighting an uphill battle against a lifetime of what I think I know about him - including Patroclus’s account in Miller’s previous book. I find it jarring, but it certainly stands up to scrutiny.

I enjoyed this more than The Song Of Achilles largely thanks to the absence of a narrator swoonily swooning over things, but there’s not a great deal to pick between them. If you enjoyed on, by all means read the other but don’t expect something new and different from it.

4 stars (but only just)

Baby Spart(an) Do Do Do Do Do Do - The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with the Iliad because it’s been out a while, so, Spoilers, I guess?

The Song of Achilles is a retelling, one which takes the myth and runs with it. Here Achilles really is the son of a sea nymph, he is trained by a centaur, and gods play their part in the lives of man.

I used to know my Classics a lot better that I do now - Roger Lancelyn Green’s books were a staple of my childhood library - so this was a book which unfolded for me. I remembered each plot point as we hit it, so I’m entirely the wrong person to ask if it makes any logical sense. It probably doesn’t. It certainly could have done a better job of selling ancient motivations to a modern audience.

The story is told by Patroclus, a prince and, when he begins this story, unlikely candidate for Helen’s hand in marriage. I am super here for a room full of men deciding what will happen to a teenage girl, as you can imagine. This is a male story, though, and Miller doesn’t attempt to change that.

However, when Patroclus inadvertently kills another boy, he is exiled to the court of Peleus where he falls swooningly in love with Mary Sue Achilles, who’s super perfect at everything (as one expects from a demi-god). Thetis, Achilles’ mother, really hates Patroclus. The boys go off to learn things on a mountain. They are swoonily swoony. They come back. Thetis hates Patroclus. Then she hides Achilles because she doesn’t want him to go to Troy as he will be killed.

Once the war actually begins, a good half way through the book, things improve, in part because there’s actually things happening. There is air of inexorability to the whole thing which really gets into its stride in the last third as we make the drive towards what is fated to happen (and we’re no longer reading rambling scenes about how swoony teenage Achilles is).

When Miller hits the predetermined narrative events, she’s good. When she’s making her own way between, she’s… less good.

For a book which treats the gods as real, there’s an awful lot of “something’s happening because the gods are displeased” conversations, followed by “here’s the solution to that” conversations. Obviously there’s no one correct version of many of the myths, but sometimes Miller takes the path of most boredom, such as the demand for the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Apollo’s appearance on the walls of Troy especially charmed me, so the omission of the gods involvement in other ways, even as a background, felt disappointing.

I am also critical of the characterisation. Odysseus is great, true, but everybody else? Eh.

Achilles lives his whole life chained to the prophecies made about him, but whatever this does to him remains unexplored. He’s just some guy. Admittedly one who is super good at everything and jolly good looking. And when we’re reading the narrative of a boy, then man, who is in love with him, I’d really have preferred to grasp the appeal.

Thetis is especially poorly done. Like her son she is chained to the pronouncements of the Fates, but here she is a pure JustNoMil. She’s such a central figure in the original myth - the Trojan war begins because of a prophecy made about her: the son of Thetis will be greater than his father, hence “marriage” to Peleus, hence somebody not doing the invitations right, hence golden apple etc etc etc

I was also unreasonably annoyed that Miller chooses to not use the one thing everybody knows about our demi-god: that he really should have invested in some foot armour. Google assures me Homer doesn’t include the story of Thetis’s attempt to make her son invulnerable and immortal, but Homer doesn’t include Achilles’ death, either. Or the romantic relationship between him and Patroclus. It felt like a massive oversight rather than a deliberate decision.

The beginning was interesting if not grippy. Then it got a bit dull. Then a bit duller. Then, by the end, it was very good indeed. I don’t rule out reading Circe, Miller’s second full length novel, but I could just as easily not. Overall?

3 stars