Circe

She turned Odysseus's men into pigs.

She used magic to transform her enemies.

She was banished into exile.

But, what if she was a hell of a lot more than that?

That's the premise behind Madeline Miller's Circe, which I finished more than a week ago but that has been hanging with me ever since. There's so much here to interpret from Greek mythology that, as all great myths do, has meaning today. As a woman, this one hit home even harder.

I read this immediately after reading Miller's Song of Achilles, which came out quite awhile ago but that I was hesitant to read. You can read my review of that one here. I felt like it made sense to stay within the genre and there was just enough slight crossover between the two that it felt right to read them together.

Like the other, Circe can be criticized as a book that oversimplifies a classic tale. That's what I liked about it, though. It doesn't feel "dumbed down" - it feels accessible. And, though she's a sorceress or a nymph or at the very least a magical witch, it feels relatable, too. Much more than the mythology I tried to read in high school and college.

Circe's a complicated woman, to be sure. She's exiled to an island and relies on her magic to keep herself safe. If you believe in Miller's interpretation, she's widely misunderstood. This book reveals motive behind the magic and the struggles of a woman forced to go it alone, facing danger from nature and from the men who come upon her shores (holy crap, that sentence proves I need to read some non-mythological fare for awhile.) I came to see Circe as strong and weak, as victim and as vulnerable. Like so many women, the outsiders try to see her as one thing or another, not the combination of many.

I read a New York Times interview with the author in which she talks about how "Circe as a character is the embodiment of male anxiety about female power... of course, she has to be vanquished."

By revisiting Circe's story, but this time with Circe recast, you feel her more as a representation of the criticism women face while showing their strength to the world.

This book is long, but not complicated. It's an easy read, in fact. And, it's the kind of story that has made me think more in the days since I finished it about the role of women in literature and culture - and how so much - yet so little - has changed.