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A review by sheryl_macca
Circe by Madeline Miller
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Circe is a story of a woman discovering herself. Circe is searching for her place in the world, learning what her true desires are, evaluating her flaws and finding what she rightly deserves. It's a thoroughly modern tale of loss, love, family and purpose set in ancient Greece with all its recognisable myths, gods and goddesses. My favourite thread of the tale is how Circe must first learn to not trust so easily and then to trust more fully once again.
The first person past tense puts a slight distance or small separation between the reader and the protagonist, Circe. Perhaps it's there to keep us mortals from the gods or maybe to reflect the exile Circe lives in, maybe it's a metaphor for the fear of witches. Whatever its purpose it didn't feel wrong.
The passage of time in this book is strange, in fact, there is very little concept of time. As the gods are immortal time is irrelevant to them but they are hyper aware of it in relation to the mortals they entwine their lives with. The book covers hundreds of years but the pace either meanders gently or suddenly hops on a few months giving a feeling of only a decade having passed at most. It's an odd feeling. I think that I should probably feel fully immersed by this but I didn't.
I enjoyed the book immensely but the end was uncomfortable for me and put a dampener on the whole tale.
The first person past tense puts a slight distance or small separation between the reader and the protagonist, Circe. Perhaps it's there to keep us mortals from the gods or maybe to reflect the exile Circe lives in, maybe it's a metaphor for the fear of witches. Whatever its purpose it didn't feel wrong.
The passage of time in this book is strange, in fact, there is very little concept of time. As the gods are immortal time is irrelevant to them but they are hyper aware of it in relation to the mortals they entwine their lives with. The book covers hundreds of years but the pace either meanders gently or suddenly hops on a few months giving a feeling of only a decade having passed at most. It's an odd feeling. I think that I should probably feel fully immersed by this but I didn't.
I enjoyed the book immensely but the end was uncomfortable for me and put a dampener on the whole tale.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Confinement, Death, Grief, Infidelity, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Medical trauma, and Rape