What an interesting riff on mythology fills this charming novel that reinterprets a minor god of the Odyssey, Circe, by Madeline Miller. In this take, Circe is treated as an outcast by her majestic family of gods, headed by her father Helios, perhaps due to her having a "mortal" voice, unlike the booming voices of the deities. Her mother sneers at her, the other nymphs ignore her and when she transforms a mortal into a god, he rejects her. Not a good start.
Her father, says Circe, is "a harp with only one string and the note it plays is himself." The lives of these gods were nothing to envy. The palace intrigue alone would daunt the best of us, but the endless days, proscribed futures and limited roles were even worse. There was no empathy, the gods were purely transactional. At least Henry the Eighth occasionally fell in love, but that didn't happen in the courts of the gods, despite all the virulent jealousy.
No matter. Circe found her own way. Banished to an island, alone for millennia, she finds a way to connect with others, to overcome her own misgivings, to thrive. This interesting and entertaining book found a way to turn a familiar story on its head and give us a new way to consider familiar myths that contain even more familiar ways of interacting with each other and our beliefs. Very good!
And so on to our next book. I successfully muscled the group into reading Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, hopefully you will all like it. Our next meeting is March 16 at 6:30pm, still on Zoom unless the world changes back to the one we remember.
See you all then!
