Circe

My second book of the year (I'm aiming to read 104 this year so they probably won't all get blog posts) was Circe, by Madeline Miller. Let me preface this by saying I had heard a lot of great things, and I also love mythology, so I was primed to love this book. From the back of the book:

"In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love."

I really love retellings of Myths in unique ways, and this is probably my favorite retelling I've read. Circe in most other tales is a minor character, we mostly know her from the Odyssey, as one of the 'monsters' that Odysseus outwits. I personally liked Circe in the Odyssey, I thought it was fitting that she turned men into pigs. But this story I loved because it gives her perspective. From birth until the end of her story. We often don't see female characters in Greek Myths in a good light; there is some evidence that female centric myths were destroyed or lost to time. Circe in fact has 3 ancient plays about her which are lost. So to have a story which centers on a female character, who often is just the witch archetype, gives her depth and agency which I loved.

Starting at her birth and her childhood as a daughter of Helios, we see her grow and we see why she becomes who she does when we find her in the known myths. She has side action, interacting with other famous heroes and mythic characters and creatures. We see her complex motives and the way she forms her identity. We see how she is too often a pawn for the men around her and that when she is hurt, she increases her power and finds a way to protect herself, as well as those she loves.


I think that anybody who likes Greek Mythology, or Mythology from other pantheons, would like this book. It is beautifully written and very engaging. I finished it in just 3 days because I could hardly put it down. Circe is also very relatable. She isn't a goddess, she's a witch, an alchemist, a poisoner. She doesn't just wave her hands and the world changes as she wills it to, she spends time gathering and preparing herbs, working hard at her craft. She feels guilty for things she did that had hurt those she didn't intend to hurt. She tries to only turn dangerous or hurtful men into pigs, the rest she lets go free. She is truly a very human goddess, which makes her story all the more compelling.

Small Great Things

​So I just finished Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. For the most part, I enjoyed this book. It was a good story, and I think a timely one (it was published in 2016, so I’m 3 years late). From the back of the book:
“Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?

Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.

With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn't offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.”

The death of the infant happens quite early in the story, and the majority of it is focused on the trial. 

I’ll be honest, I’m going to criticize this book a lot, but I really did enjoy it. One night I said I was only going to read for 20 minutes, but it was so gripping I read for 2 hours instead. The plot is very engaging, and the writing is good. There were a couple things I didn't like: that each chapter switched between perspectives of one of the main characters, and that it was a white woman writing about racism.

I thought it was an interesting choice, and one that I didn’t really like, that some of the chapters were told from the perspective of different characters besides Ruth. I’m usually not very impressed with perspective jumps, whether POV or time jumps. POV jumps I mind less, but I’m not crazy about them. This one I don’t think I would have minded, but it often told the same events from two or three different characters perspectives, which got a little repetitive. It felt unnecessary, and that we could have just understood the characters thoughts from their reactions, without having to repeat the entire scene with their thought process. 

But the biggest issue I had with the perspective switch was really the way it was done to humanize the character of the white supremacist. It showed his tragic backstory and the love he found through his beliefs. I personally was torn on this. In some ways I think it’s important to humanize people so that we can see they’re not monsters and to be careful if we see people turning into them. On the other hand, it felt a lot like giving them a voice, when they really shouldn’t have one. 

The book did clearly show that those beliefs were wrong. It also did a lot with general white people’s racism. The fact that as white people, we are all racist, and it’s something that although we might not like to talk, or even think, about it, it’s something we should confront. The author did a great job in asserting this, but at certain points in the novel I couldn’t help but think “wow this was written by a white lady.” It reminded me of the writing advice “it’s good to write books about marginalized people, even if you’re not, but if you’re not, don’t write about the marginalization.” At some points it did seem a little white savior-ish, but thankfully that was somewhat resolved and Kennedy, the white woman, stepped back. 

There was a lot of Kennedy stopping to consider how she interacted differently with the world than people of color do. She spent some time near the middle of the book where she didn’t listen to Ruth when she talked about racism, but towards the end of the book she began listening, which was both good and bad. She spend a good amount of time just depending on Ruth to teach her. However it was an improvement from believing she knew about racism, and it did force her to continue on and confront it in herself and learn apart from Ruth. 

There was a twist at the very end of the book that I absolutely did not like. I don’t want to reveal it and spoil you, however it felt very forced. It seemed like she didn’t want to leave with characters you disliked, so she tried to induce change and it felt very inorganic. Click below for spoilers.

So the 'twist' was that it turned out the white supremacist mother whose baby died was actually half black and her mother had run away and that was what caused her father to hate black people and teach that hate to his daughter. So when his daughter found out she was mixed, she had a breakdown and ended up killing herself. Her husband, the father of the baby who died, instead learned that his white supremacist ways were wrong, and went on to do guest lectures at prison to talk about how white supremacy was wrong. I think it's cool to show reformation and show that it is possible, but I thought this was a sloppy way to do it. That kind of change usually takes a lot of effort, which Picoult mostly skimmed over, and having the wife be white-passing mixed and kill herself just seemed sad.

That being said, I do think she did a fairly good job. She did a lot of research and it really shows. I do think this is an good book to read. But I think where it really excels is as a book for those white people who don’t think they are racist, as a way to ease into thinking about this. They can be spoon fed it by a white author, but still have get the knowledge. And who knows, maybe they’ll branch out from there. The author did leave a bibliography in the back of the book, maybe they can read more about racism today 😉