“Circe, he says, it will be all right. It is the saying of an oracle or a prophet….He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.”
I wore out my audible rewind when I listened to those soothing lines. So often good books deliver important messages straight to my heart. And I’m a huge sucker for life in perspective. Thankfully, Madeline Miller’s got one ton of wisdom, and she’s not afraid to share it. Sapience bubbles up and overflows in her protagonists. To quote Depeche Mode, “I just can’t get enough. I just can’t get enough.”
In case my December post wasn’t effusive enough, let me reiterate once more: I L-O-V-E-D The Song of Achilles—as in big Aphrodite platonic love. So I downloaded Circe with wicked speed. In college, because I totally dig the humanities, I took not one but two Greek and Roman mythology classes. Years later, I’m well aware that Circe is a minor goddess. (Nymphs aren’t front and center stuff.) Like Harry Potter, she’s good with a magic wand and she’s not afraid to turn men into pigs. Other than that, she was hardly on my radar. Miller gave Circe dimensions. Beautiful dimensions. That’s not all, “this first-person account is a kind of greatest hits of the ancient Greek world: Prometheus and his endless punishment, Scylla and Charybdis, Hermes, Apollo, Athena, Daedalus and his son Icarus, Ariadne and the Minotaur (who is Circe’s nephew), Jason and the Golden Fleece—and Odysseus, of course.” I’m with reviewer Aida Edemariam when she observes, Miller goes beyond mere magic realism where anything can happen—where changes occur willy-nilly and leave audiences divested. “The real power doesn’t lie in the ostensible facts of the narrative, but in its psychology. And that is where Miller anchors her story—in the emotional life of a woman.” A woman who I now find relatable and relevant. A woman who has me thinking about what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch my feet. Who’s got me thinking about what it means to be present.