Book of the Month: April 2018

Offered Books:

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

Circe by Madeline Miller

The Oracle Year by Charles Soule

Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall

The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Well

Selected:

Circe by Madeline Miller

Others Purchased:

None - yet

Madeline Miller's expanded look at Circe, famous from Homer's The Odyssey is one of the best damn books I have selected from Book of the Month.  While this sort of novel isn't anything new (and one of my selections from later in this year is another expanded take on a minor character from the Trojan War, to show how often they pop up), Miller does a fantastic job of not only 'filling in the plot' to justify a look at this character, but telling a wholly original story using characters that many are at least somewhat familiar with without it feeling out of place amongst the many stories of the Greek Gods.

That is quite the needle to thread, and Miller does splendidly.  From her humble beginnings in the house of the titan Helios to her banishment to the Isle where she has her famous meeting with Odysseus, Miller makes Circe a fully realized character - one who you cheer for even as she turns slightly villainous for part of the novel.

Like The City of Brass, this is a hard novel for me to go into too many details on - I don't want to spoil any of the plot - but I was fully behind it winning the Book of the Year award.  I will say that any character from the Greek mythos - no matter how small or large - that appears in this novel gets a deepening of their character through Miller's writing.

Another thing that Miller accomplishes is making Circe's long seclusion on the island of her banishment interesting.  If any part of the novel had the potential to drag, it was then, but Miller keeps the reader engaged throughout and makes them forget that so much of the action occurs in a single location.  And when they do move from the island, it feels earned.  The ending to the book is bittersweet and well done.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

5 out of 5

Author Links:

Madeline Miller