Review: Circe

Circe by Madeline Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: An exiled Greek Goddess , daughter of Helios the Sun God, deals with patriarchy on her own terms.

Remove the Greek mythology aspect and she could be any single woman dealing with the world and the gift wrapped patriarchy that comes along. Being odd in all ways - not pretty , mortal like voice, affection and empathy towards others especially mortals and blindly trusting - Circe goes through numerous failures but soon learns to deal with it all as she grows through the book. From a singled out kid to a singled out woman to a singled out single mother, she faces different challenges and deals with them differently.

In parallel track, the author introduces a lot of Greek mythology characters I had studied about back in school which hit the nostalgia for me having answered all those 3 mark and 5 mark questions on Minotaurs and Paris and Odysseus and it all made sense as it added more layers to the stories I had read from an exam perspective.

There are aspects where it stretches like a soap opera down a predictable path and you want to hit the fast forward button but if you can get through those, it makes for an interesting read on the multi layered approach that the author takes us through.

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