When a story is good, people tell it again. The retelling is compelling for the same reasons as the original — be it mountainous monsters, impossible trinkets, or ridiculous fumbles — but it also matters how the story is told. Madeline Miller is an author of the Greek myth retellings “The Song of Achilles” and “Circe.” Some retellings, while from the same family of fantastical stories, aren’t very enjoyable to read. Miller’s characterizing imagery and abundant details keeps myths alive for modern readers.
Miller’s two books are narrated in first person by Achilles’ companion Patroclus, and the goddess Circe. Both narrators are given an unusual characterization as weak, slow and generally unimpressive compared to those around them. Miller shifts their characterizations with the use of imagery. When Circe describes her powerful father, light comes from “everywhere at once, his yellow skin, his lambent eyes, the bronze flashing of his hair.” Throughout the book, Circe’s weakness is derived in part from her father’s authority. The gods’ power is equated with their beauty, so because her father is described as oozing light, something inherently good and beautiful, and compared with strong, luscious bronze, her father’s strength is established by Circe observing him with elegant description. Miller's imagery highlights the qualities of those surrounding her narrators, making the narrators oddly helpless in comparison.
Miller also fills her writing with interesting tidbits from mythology and history. “The Iliad” (source material for “The Song of Achilles”) has a multitude of named characters, and hordes of them are found in Miller’s retelling. Patroclus notes that “the kings of Agamemnon’s innermost circle followed him, dispersing back to their ships — Odysseus, Diomedes, Nestor, Menelaus, more. But others lingered to meet the new hero: Thessalian Eurypylus and Antilochus of Pylos, Meriones of Crete and the physician Podalerius.” Or Patroclus is happy to inform the audience that “raiding was typical siege warfare — you would not attack the city, but the lands that surrounded it that supplied it with grain and meat.”
The canonical Circe and Patroclus are terrifying, a witch and a warrior. But Miller’s imagery and observation holds the books together. Because Circe always loses against the higher gods, she can free herself of hunger for power to better love her the people she cares about.
When a Greek myth is retold exactly, with no creative liberties, the story can be too familiar, or too far removed from modern readers. The myths can also provide sparse source material, and if you don’t mix in ample thoughts or details, the prose becomes tedious. Madeline Miller’s books can be enthusiastically re-read or introduce you to Greek mythology with no prior knowledge. Regardless of the story, she is sure to tell it well.