A review by drjoeby
Circe by Madeline Miller

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Dealing very personally at the moment with, like, a weird fear of death for the first time (don’t people usually do that as teenagers?) and anyway the way that this book talks about mortality and impermanence is so…romantic. Like it makes me feel better about one day being dead, you know? There’s this bit in there, and I don’t have the exact quote but it’s
Circe talking about immortality and lamenting that the hills and beaches mortals never see change she has to watch move, that she can live so quietly in peoples’ memories but live forever, and being human is the opposite of that, we can outlive our mountains in name but not once in our lifetimes see them change, and that stable world around me is a source of comfort.

Reading the last few pages of this book is such a strong blow, reading “Pulse by pulse, his life passed under my fingers” and “He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here”. For a book about myth and immortality and characters that, through centuries of parody, have become like paper, there is so much depth in the way these themes and people are held, so much texture and reality to it all that it feels more like a book on being human, on coping, on living that I really needed right now.
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