Book Name: Circe
Book Genre: Mythological Fiction
Author: Madeline Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Year Published: April 2019
Award: The International No. 1 Bestseller
Background about picking this book:
I was a teenager when I met Rick Riordan ‘s universe of Greek Mythology and instantly got hooked to it. I have always been a digger when it comes to reading. I want more and more if I like something.
Greek Mythology has reduced is as huge as one can size up Indian mythology tales. Mythological fiction as a genre is very interesting as you get to imagine a humanized version of the great gods as they may say.
We know so much but yet it is just a small drop in the vast ocean of knowledge that is available. When I read Percy Jackson and all the following book series, I could really only get a glimpse of the Big Three’s nature and characteristics, and this statement stands true for all gods in general. We get a generic idea of the nature of each n every one of them.
How I picked this up:
This is where this review is coming from. I was walking down the market street in Southampton when I walked into a shop to get some stationary. By the entrance itself they first have books section and well never let me wander there alone!!! But since there was no one to actually stop me, I explored. There it was, sitting right in the front shelf with a book cover good enough to catch your attention with the title written clearly and big enough to catch one’s eye.
I had known only what an average Greek Mythology nerd would know about ‘Circe’. That she was a Titan who was exiled to an island which she enchanted so no one would find her. I picked up the book and scanned the abstract and well, did not take much of a convincing for me to make the purchase.
The storyline:
The book starts in the halls of Helios, the sun titan who is also Circe’s father. A girl born to a nymph along with 2 brothers and a sister. The story of an outcast as how she was treated as she did not fit the ideal mold of beautiful. How her mother and siblings treated her like a curse born in the family to taint their name, yet Circe was never bothered enough to retaliate. Not that the words did not hurt, but Helios allowing her to stay at his feet was good enough for her to ignore everything else.
She didn’t know she was a witch until she accidentally changed a human, she fell in love with in a God. This was the reason she was exiled to an island as a result of a mutual agreement between Zeus and Helios to maintain the peace among them. Over her time on the island she evolves into a full-blown witch practicing her craft. She matured as a person over time and she started liking the loneliness and got sucked in it. Her tendency to fall for humans only ever caused her troubles but in the end what she did was for a human as well.
Favorite Lines from Books:
‘Bold action and bold manners are not the same’ pg. 17
“Do you know who truly wins wars?” pg. 186
‘Children are not sack of grain, to be substituted one for another’ pg. 220
‘What creature waits within me?’ pg. 331
The review:
The story is written over a few centuries because of course if it’s a god you can’t expect all the stuff that happens with them to be unraveled in lifetime of any human. This was not an issue for me. My natural tendency for reading any book is, if I get hooked by the fourth chapter then I might even finish the book in one or two sittings, depending on the book-size. The wasn’t a huge book to deal with, just a mere 333 pages. Connecting with Circe is what took me more than a century, literally! The book is more like event excerpts throughout the centuries but then the distribution of the time spent on each event is what I felt was lacking. This made me a break-read kind of person and it took me 2 weeks to complete the book as I wasn’t reaching out to it that much. The writing style was very modern and the language was fluid and easy on the eyes.
That was about the content spacing but now let’s see the storyline itself and I will agree with the rest of the world that it definitely deserves to be called ‘The International No. 1 Bestseller’. The story is so well written and the event are well described, thus giving us an insight of the thinking line and emotional reactions that Circe experiences. Some of the events were very briefly described and all I could wish for was more information and I am saying it in a good was because this is what gives birth to head canons and I love reading them and reflecting if I agree with them or not.
Conclusion:
Overall, I would recommend it to you to experience a different style of reading as most of the stories we read are always set in a specific timeline and this goes above and beyond any.
Although initially the book couldn’t keep me hooked but now that I have finished reading, I can claim that it will be one of those books I will pick when I want to do some light reading and can definitely finish in a day.
Lastly a hearty congratulations to Madeline Miller on such a brilliant book.
Until next time,
Keep Scribbling.
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