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Tag Archives: Odysseus

Outcast Goddess: Circe

21 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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book review, Circe, coming-of-age story, divine rivalries, episodic narrative, Greek myth, historical fiction, Immortality, Madeline Miller, magic, narcissistic deities, Odysseus, outcast protagonist, uncertainty of life

Review: Circe, by Madeline Miller
Little, Brown, 2018. 385 pp. $28

From the earliest age, the sun god Helios’ youngest daughter fits nowhere and has no friends, only detractors; and are they vicious. Circe is stupid, ugly, awkward, has no common sense, and speaks like a mortal, they say. Like any child, she yearns for some sign, however faint, of paternal affection, but Helios can’t bear the sight of her, and her mother jokes at her expense like everyone else in the sun god’s great hall.

In divine eyes, Circe’s flaw is possessing empathy, for which they have no use and regard as weakness. They weigh every moment, every interaction, as a barometer of who’s got more power, more adoration, and more of whatever admirable trait under discussion, whether physical strength, beauty, or cleverness.

What an exhausting, empty way to live, except that gods don’t live, exactly; they simply exist. And Circe sticks out because she’s dissatisfied with that, and the whole narcissistic one-upmanship game that defines the divine presence. In fact, her first act of rebellion is to offer succor to the suffering Prometheus, an outcast.

When she turns to witchcraft, Helios considers her too dangerous to keep on hand, so he banishes her to an island called Aiaia. In case that’s not in your atlas, just sail north from Scylla and Charybdis, fabled pitfalls from the Odyssey. But Odysseus won’t show up for a while. And before he does, Circe will have her hands full with her older sister, Pasiphaë, who births the Minotaur; Daedalus; and Medea, among others. So the novel offers plenty of action, while portraying its protagonist’s growth from unwanted waif to a power that even Helios and Athena must reckon with.

The measure of this novel is not that Circe comes into her own because she concocts the right potions, though she’s skilled at that. Rather, she grows into herself. I’ve never read a coming-of-age novel that unfolds over centuries, but that’s what Circe is. You can see why teenage girls have embraced this book the way they have; the feminist themes, simple, direct language, and absolute clarity of action and intention may be found in good young adult novels. But I don’t mean to limit Circe’s readership, for Miller has invested her narrative with adult themes and conflicts as well.

Circe and Odysseus, circa 490-480 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens (courtesy Marsyas, via Wikimedia Commons)

For one thing, she grapples with the meaning of life, contrasting it with the immortality that, while attractive, remains unfulfilling precisely because it’s predictable and unchanging. The uncertainty that troubles human dealings is also life’s greatest attribute. Further, Miller delves into issues involving marriage and childrearing — only a parent could have written certain passages — weighing what price each exacts and what benefits each confers. Finally, the author considers the thirst for glory and fame, as exemplified by Odysseus, a brilliantly conceived character:

Moment by moment, his vitality had returned. His eyes were bright now, storm-lit. When he talked, he was lawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world. It was not just his words, though they were clever enough. It was everything together: his face, his gestures, the sliding tones of his voice. I would say it was like a spell he cast, but there was no spell I knew that could equal it. The gift was his alone.

I confess, I avoided reading Circe because I struggled to get through fifty pages of Miller’s previous novel, The Song of Achilles. But Circe feels like a more confident, deeper, more fully fleshed creation, avoiding the pitfalls that plague lesser retellings of Greek myths that I mentioned last week. Miller knows the myths and culture inside and out, has parsed out every detail of thought, action, and physical setting, and invites you to share that intimacy.

Even so, she never persuades me, even for an instant, that her characters will diverge from the path ordained from them, an illusion I look for and treasure in these retellings, as I also wrote last week. Circe appears to hew pretty closely to the myths I know, though I don’t pretend to be an expert. Also, as I said, the narrative is simple and direct, so, though I see artistry here, I wouldn’t call it subtle. Moreover, it’s an episodic tale rather than a unified story building to a climax, and though the episodes hold my interest and are often tense, as with many biographical novels, I want more cohesion and force.

Nevertheless, Circe is a wonderful book, and I recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Fathers and Sons: Ithaca

27 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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ancient world, book review, coming-of-age story, Greece, historical fiction, Ithaca, literary fiction, machismo, Menelaus, Odysseus, Odyssey, Patrick Dillon, Penelope, Sparta, Telemachus, Trojan War, warrior culture

Review: Ithaca, by Patrick Dillon
Pegasus, 2016. 264 pp. $26

Imagine a boy reaching the age of sixteen, never having met his father but having heard the most incredible stories of his heroism in battle, strength, daring, leadership, and cleverness. The boy is certain he shares none of these qualities, except, perhaps, the last. But cleverness alone won’t protect his mother, who’s besieged by oafish, ambitious suitors she can’t get rid of, and who eat up whatever wealth the father left behind when he went to war–the boy’s inheritance. The only hope the son can cling to, and it’s not much, is that his father will, no, must return and put things right. But that hope competes against anger at the father’s irresponsibility and selfishness for staying away so long. And when an old friend passes through, he lets drop a remark like a lightning bolt: Your father’s a liar.

Slaughter of Penelope's suitors by Odysseus, Telemachus, and Eumeus, ca. 330 BCE (Courtesy Louvre, via Wikimedia Commons)

Slaughter of Penelope’s suitors by Odysseus, Telemachus, and Eumeus, ca. 330 BCE (Courtesy Louvre, via Wikimedia Commons)

This is the premise to Dillon’s inventive, gripping take on Odysseus’s return to Ithaca following the Trojan War, except that the key figure here is Telemachus, the son. At once a coming-of-age story and a narrative about martial charisma, Ithaca asks, What is the measure of a man? Fighting is the way of Telemachus’s world, but he’s never learned how; Odysseus wasn’t there to teach him. To be sure, the warriors who plague his mother and drive her deeper and deeper within herself give their calling a poor reputation. They’re vain, pompous, rude, and coarse, abusive to their subordinates (or those whom they’d like to make subordinate), and, if they perceive a slight, will kill by way of answer. Naturally, young Telemachus hates and mistrusts them, and would never want to be like them:

I . . . look down at. . . the washing lines festooned with young men’s clothes, at the tents made of carpets draped over furniture dragged from the great hall, at the targets daubed on the walls, the piles of smashed jars, broken sticks and abandoned wine-skins. I breathe in the stench rising from the pit they use as a toilet, and the fire of sawn-up furniture whose smoke is already dirtying the clean morning air. . . I don’t want to think about what I’ve just seen: a man killed casually in a knife fight over a girl, his body left lying in a pool of blood. I try to remember what the courtyard looked like when I was little.

But he also fears them and hates his powerlessness, and he worries what will happen to his mother and himself should these quarrelsome guests ever put aside their rivalries to act in concert. Reluctantly, he leaves Ithaca to search for Odysseus, and his first stop is Pylos, where old Nestor rules, his father’s good friend and comrade-in-arms. Nestor has no news, but he wants to help. He sends his daughter, Polycaste, a girl of Telemachus’s age, to guide the boy to Sparta and its king, Menelaus, the victor of the Trojan War. His ships range all over Greek and foreign waters, so if anyone knows what happened to Odysseus, Menelaus will.

The journey entails much more than a visit to a powerful lord, however, and Dillon turns his skill and insight toward a main theme of the novel: how the ability to fight defines masculinity and sexual power. In a switch, Polycaste is the warrior, whereas Telemachus hardly knows how to hold a sword. (Wouldn’t it have to be that way, or Nestor would never have put them together?) The author portrays Menelaus as a braggart and a bore, but he’s also a miserable soul who possesses everything in the world except happiness. It’s a terrific characterization.

The narrative shifts into Odysseus’s frame, as he lodges with a Phoenician trader and his wife, recovering until he’s fit to make the final voyage to Ithaca. Again, Dillon explores the sexual power theme, as he shows the trader’s daughter, Nausicaa, drooling over the shipwrecked hero. But the others react very differently, and though they feel the draw of Odysseus’s words when he tells of his travels and wars, they privately reserve judgment. Is it possible that he’s lying about details or even entire exploits, an uncertainty that goes back to the question that plagues Telemachus? And even if what Odysseus says is true, do his adventures always suggest cleverness and a deft hand, or do greed, bungling, and poor seamanship play a part?

Ithaca is a fascinating tale, even–especially–if you’ve read the Odyssey or know the myth.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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