FICTION Of gods and men
NICK RENNISON is engrossed by a vivid reimagining of one of ancient Greek mythology’s most fascinating figures
Circe by Madeline Miller Bloomsbury, 352 pages, £16.99
Daughter of the sun god Helios, Circe is one of the immortals in the enormous pantheon of ancient Greece. However, she is unloved by her parents and mocked by her siblings. After helping her uncle, the Titan Prometheus, punished for his defiance of Zeus, she incurs the wrath of the king of the Olympian gods herself. Exiled to a remote island to live a solitary life, the wild animals she tames are her only companions. There she nurtures her talents as a sorceress and witch.
Yet despite her centuries-long isolation, Circe has a part to play in some of the most resonant stories in Greek mythology. In Crete, she assists her sister Pasiphaë in the birth of the monstrous Minotaur, and briefly becomes the lover of the mortal craftsman and inventor Daedalus. She encounters Jason, travelling back to Greece after his acquisition of the Golden Fleece, together with Medea, the king’s daughter who helped him. When sailors visit Circe’s island, many with rape and theft in mind, the sorceress has no shortage of skills with which to defend herself. She transforms her would-be assailants into pigs that run squealing. When another band of apparent pirates lands on the shores of her island, Circe initially has no qualms about viewing them as potential pork but their leader intrigues her. Odysseus is unlike any mortal she has previously met. She takes him to her bed, an act that will unleash a chain of consequences that even she, with her magical powers, cannot predict.
Madeline Miller’s first novel, The Song of Achilles, deservedly won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. Circe, her second trawl through the riches of ancient Greek mythology, is even better than its predecessor. Written in supple, imaginative prose, it conjures up brilliantly a vivid world in which the lives of gods and mortals are intimately intertwined.