Madeline Miller Circe

Good Afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Madeline Miller, author of Circe, published just last week by Lee Boudreaux Book, an imprint of Little Brown.Madeline previous work is The Song of Achilles was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her essays have appeared in many periodicals, including The Guardian, WSJ, Laphams Quarterly and NPR. She also wrote a great Kindle single, while set in a seemingly modern world, once again invokes the past and the Greek myths.Circe continues the story of Odysseus as he takes us from the Iliad to the Odyssey. But rather than focusing on him, the book centers around Circe, daughter of Helios, the Sun God. Circe gets her self in all kinds of jams using the precursor of magic to transform her first love into a God who then rejects her, leading indirectly to the creation of Scylla who along with Charybdis blocks the passage of sailors with horrible consequences. Now considered by her father and Zeus, dangerous rather than just a nuisance, she is exiled to a remote island. The island that Odysseus lights upon and where his men are turned into wild pigs. Circe stands up to Athena and the whole panoply of Gods.She is a super heroine and one with whom you emphasize and admire.Mixing power and goodness is always a risky endeavor and Madeline is able to do so in portraying Circe and her life.