Commentary: Circe by Madeline Miller
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Let’s talk about disappointment. But not disappointment that ruins a story, rather disappointment that makes a story truly touching.
Circe by Madeline Miller was a 2 day-fast read; I found myself swallowed up by this thousand year story.
This was one of those books that disappointed me masterfully, pushed against my expectations and desires at every turn. I’d beg for one thing and be shown another. I grew frustrated, anxious, and I lost hope for our main character often. But in the end, the story fit and I’m glad it didn’t go the way I wanted it to.
We readers all walk into books with expectations, assumptions, and desires. There is a careful line every writer walks: balancing between fulfilling us and subverting us, so that we stay interested. When our expectations with each and every scene are not fulfilled, sometimes it is easy to allow disappointment to ruin the journey.
But disappointment was the heart of this story.
For the black sheep of the family, Circe is the kind of relatable character that makes you feel genuine heartache— the kind of ache when you witness your own pains mirrored back at you through someone else. The kind of pain you know deeply.
For this reason, I begged for Circe’s life to change, for her to rise up against her brutish family of Titans and Olympians, for her to feel worth, for her to feel treasured by someone, for her to find happiness and power, for her to not constantly be used by everyone else. I was often disappointed by the plot, driving Circe deeper and deeper into isolation and cynicism. Further away from what I wanted for her. But it drove her closer to what she actually needed to feel treasured, happy, powerful, and independent.
Circe experiences bitter disappointment after bitter disappointment, but grows with each one— inching closer to the self she wonders about, the self she doesn’t yet know, the self she is scared to know, but the self she is destined to become by the Fates none the less.
The first line of the book tells us that Circe is something unknown; there is no name for her kind. That’s why we expect her to become what we see around her— the other gods and their shared taste for violence, pleasure, and wit. But she doesn’t become that. She is becoming that entity we haven’t seen yet. And it isn’t until the end that we see what that entity is. Who Circe becomes is well earned. The disappointments along the journey to that Circe made the arrival all the more delightful.