Circe
Madeline Miller (2018)
“The 'witch' of The Odyssey finally speaks — and her story turns out to be about what it costs to become yourself.”
For Students
Because every story you've been told about dangerous women was told by someone who found them dangerous for a reason. Circe asks you to sit inside that danger and understand it from within. It's also one of the most precisely written novels about what it actually takes to learn a skill — the failure, the patience, the revision — which turns out to apply to everything from pharmaka to essay writing.
For Teachers
The novel works beautifully alongside the Odyssey — as preparation, as companion, as counterpoint. The diction analysis opportunities are exceptional: Miller's register shifts are consistent enough to teach and visible enough to track. The feminist retellings unit practically writes itself. And it's the rare novel that students read ahead.
Why It Still Matters
The experience of being told you are insufficient for the world you were born into — and then building a different world from what you can find — is not specific to witches or ancient Greece. Circe's isolation on Aiaia is the isolation of anyone who doesn't fit the categories their family or culture provides. Her craft is whatever you develop in the absence of people who understand what you're doing. Her final choice is the choice to stop optimizing for acceptance and start living.