CIRCE

Song of Achilles is one of my favourite books and I'm excited to say Circe was just as good for me. Greek mythology is so fascinating and the author is able to make it feel different and fresh but also authentic and real. I felt all the feelings and couldn't put it down.

4.5/5 This book is beautiful. Beautifully written and a beautiful story that was told. I read Song of Achillies first and Madeline did it again for me. I am a big Greek Mythology person, so I knew a little about Circe and her interactions when the big Greek heroes going into this. What I didn't know was who she was as a person. This book gives you so much context into her background and explanations as to why she is portrayed as a villain in some of these myths. This is a woman who preserved and became stronger because of what she went through. I applaud her.

This book was an absolute slog and, if I wasn't reading it for a book club, I would not have taken the time to finish it. I genuinely had to skim the last 60% of the book. Frankly, a lot of that had simply to do with the style of writing. It was pretty, sure, but it also felt like a history textbook. There were no stakes, no tension. It is a biography from a POV that's as dull as the story. I get where it was going, now that I've read the end, but it doesn't make it any more enjoyable for me. Another piece that didn't help my lack of interest was the pacing. It skipped and skipped, throwing hundreds of years away in the space between paragraphs. It spoke of the past tense out of order on occasion, confusing me as to whom or when we were reading. And Circe was dull. Perhaps that was the point of it? I don't know, but I couldn't have cared less about her the entire time, which only made the read all the more arduous.

Great retelling of the Greek Myths from a feminist perspective. I've never been a fan of the disjointed tales, but Miller weaved them together so effortlessly that I truly enjoyed the journey.

Extremely dull story. I don’t think tropes about being a wife or mother are exactly a “retelling” of a story. But sure.