#this was so much longer than expected and i STILL ahave so many thoughts omg!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lilquill · 5 years

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i take it you read circe!! did you like it?

I did read Circe!! And my gosh, I’m in LOVE with everything about it!! The language is stunning, the portrayal of emotions is done incredibly well, the themes are complex, and I couldn’t put the book down! I spent several nights in a row reading until 2 A.M.! All in all it was a captivating, exquisite story.

There will be spoilers below the read more cut, just so all those who haven’t read it yet can go in with a fresh perspective if they wish!

The first thing that really hits you is the prose. It’s BEAUTIFUL! The tone of it is very much like a myth or fairy tale, ethereal and full of stunning descriptions and metaphors, which fits perfectly with the story it’s telling.

Circe’s own powers are strong in transformation, and the way that her narration uses incredible metaphors reflects that quite well: looking at something and seeing something else as it.

I loved the aesthetic of the book. The vivid imagery really sucks you in! Picturing a young girl in the dark halls of Helios, a young woman desperately wringing our herbs over the sleeping body of her beloved to make him a god, a weary yet defiant mother holding her baby and casting a spell to spite the Olympians, a woman walking into the sea to confront a massive god as old as the planet to ask for his tail and risking eternal torture, a daughter finally standing up to the sun god himself to demand her freedom as he almost scorched her….I could go on! The writing was so evocative, and I had chills at so many points!

I also loved the structure of the story itself, and its circular narrative that contrasted itself. How it starts with a cruel family where she felt out of place and alone, and how it ends with her having found her family, bound by love and compassion. How it starts with her trying to turn her beloved into a god so he can be with her with pharmaka, and how it ends with her using that same herb to become mortal so she can live with those she loves. How it starts with her turning Scylla into a monster, and how it ends with her killing Scylla so she no longer kills mortals. How it starts with Helios burning her as she stands firm that she has harnessed an herb’s powers, to how it ends with her standing her ground against that same burning father with her own magic from those herbs as a defense. I could go on and on, but I loved how Circe grew and how she inverted the beginnings of her narrative.

The way that Circe’s tale spanned so many different stories in Greek mythology was done incredibly well and highlighted her experiences with love and loss and pain and her perspective on the world around her.

I also deeply loved Miller’s portrayal of Greek mythology as it is commonly known. The stories of great battles and grand feats have the glamor stripped back to reveal their ugliness and callousness, all with a switch of perspective. From the perspective of a woman relegated to the sidelines in these epic stories, a woman who has been watching all this happen for millennia, these stories change.

I’ve talked about how the senseless violence in a lot of western stories, both older and now, bothers me (maybe not on my blog, but definitely to a lot of my friends). Therefore, I really loved how Circe was genuinely upset by these things and sought to fix them.

There was so much tension, and the stakes were incredibly high, but Circe does not succumb to the usual fantasy protagonist’s “war is evil but it is necessary and this whole series is about war and the conflict of war, the protagonist throws up on the battlefield and then becomes a great warrior and/or commander and then it’s all good” type deal. She was not tangled in a “war” or “battle” in the literal sense, other than the conflict between Olympians and Titans in which she became a pawn. This is what I mean about tension without unnecessary violence!! So many books are just the literary equivalent of a first-person shooter, and this is certainly the case with a lot of portrayals of Greek mythology as well, especially because of the heavy influence of ancient Greece on the West today. Circe’s story is mired in violence, but the moments with no violence at all are some of the most breathtakingly intense and dramatic.

Circe’s kindness and love, though often fierce and burning and messy, and her aching loneliness, are such a stark contrast to the gods––and even some of the mortals like Odysseus––who care nothing for lives or genuine emotion. She truly loves people, and in the end it is the way that her relationships always end as she outlives them that motivates her to give up being a god. I really enjoyed this aspect of the story! The way Miller portrays love and relationships is something I truly want to see more of.

And, speaking of kindness and love and relationships, I LOVED Miller’s portrayal of motherhood. I enjoyed that it was a subversion of the ideal of pristine, perfect, pure, gentle white housewives while still maintaining a deeply loving mother-son relationship. Many seminal feminist stories by cis white women demonize motherhood, framing it as a cage for women. Then this experience becomes universalized to all women. The problem is that, for instance, in the case of women of color, having children and a loving family is what is often denied to us. The world forces the kids of mothers of color to grow up faster and tears their families apart.

Circe is a mother in this story. She struggles with raising her child, but she loves her son fiercely and deeply, to the point where she risks eternal torment just to protect him. The gods want to take her child away, and she endures great pain and works incredibly hard to keep him. It is how the world treats mothers of color.

Look at the struggles Black women go through during pregnancy, with inadequate care at their hospitals and little research on the issues and conditions they go through, and high rates of maternal death. (I strongly encourage that you look at the ProPublica/NPR collaboration series Lost Mothers for more on this!) Look at how Latine families are being torn apart at the border, and mothers are losing their kids as those children are given to white families. Look at how the families of indigenous peoples are torn apart as kids are taken from their mothers and forced into assimilation programs. Look at the forced sterilization of mothers of color, and how eugenics treats the bodies of women of color.

Circe’s story, though written by a white woman, was deeply resonant with these things, which is something I adored about the book.

And, of course, here’s the commentary on womanhood, and how women have their agency stripped from them. Reading Circe’s story was cathartic at points. The story of a girl abused, silenced by fear, constantly put down, growing and honing her powers to the point where she can challenge those with immeasurable power. The experiences of various women woven into the story, from Perse to Pasiphae to Medea to the nymphs sent to Aiaia to Penelope. There’s so much to say tere, but Miller has already said it in her book.

I really really really deeply enjoyed this book!! Thank you for sending me this ask, anon, and I wish you well!! This reply was a lot longer than I expected, but there is truly so much to experience in this piece of literature and I’m definitely going to reread it soon!

Also, to everyone reading this, please feel free to send me your own takes on this book, and to @ me in your perspectives/reviews/etc.!! Much love to you all!!

#this was so much longer than expected and i STILL ahave so many thoughts omg!!#circe #madeline miller #greek mythology #misogyny #racialized misogyny #sexism #motherhood #book recs #sakshi speaks #hmmmm....#i'll also tag it:#sakshi reviews #just in case this becomes a more recurring thing!!#save #answered #ask #anon #anonymous

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