Books: “Circe” by Madeline Miller

It has been some time since the last entry…it is not for the lack of reading, although Downton Abbey did its best at distracting. Its been a summer of changes; and I should have known, with a comet and meteor showers that filled the night sky this year. Always the literary symbol of change.

This is my second book by Miller after Song of Achilles. The novel is written with the same care, same attention to detail, weaving classical myths into a tapestry, much like those of the famed weaver Arachne (my own favourite Greek myth). This time however, the protagonist is the nymph Circe, daughter of Titan god Helios (the God of Sun), and for me, the woes of Immortals are much less interesting than of ours who are made of rotting flesh.(Having said that, I would love to read Hades’ perspective). What I did like about the novel, however, was the slowness of time; centuries pass before Circe understands that she is too trusting of people, too child-like in her want of attention. Mortals do not have such luxury of taking time in our lessons, and it almost made me less judgmental of our daily haste. Our jam-crammed schedules, hyped-up heart rates from coffee, intolerance of time-consuming mistakes; we rest when we die, we say.

Washed up on Circe’s island and weary from the 10-year war is Odysseus. It was less the Odysseus of cunning and strength in Homer or Virgil’s epics, but more Patrick Dillon’s version, in his book Ithaca. Even the character of Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, was similar in both Dillon and Miller’s interpretation, in that Telemachus sees the tired man, not legend, and decides the cost too high for a few lines of fame. So there is, in fact, virtue in slowing down. Goodbye afternoon piccolos.

I did empathize with Circe’s feminine vulnerability, her struggles of a mother; despite being ageless, deathless, it seems motherhood is always a bitch.

All in all, whomever the protagonist, I am simply happy to have the myths continue.

“I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as start once a year brush the earth. Such constellation was he to me.“

 “Brides, nymphs were called, but that is not really how the world saw us. We were an endless feast laid out upon a table, beautiful and renewing. And so very bad at getting away.“

“Every night when he slept, I stood over his bed and told myself: tomorrow I will do better. Sometimes it was even true. Sometimes, we would run laughing down to the beach and he would sit snug in my lap as we watched the waves. His feet still kicked, his hands pulled restlessly at the skin of my arms. Yet his cheek lay on my chest, and I felt the swell and fall of his breath. My patience overflowed. Scream and scream, I thought. I can bear it. “