Where to Start with Madeline Miller: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Madeline Miller — whether to begin with Circe or The Song of Achilles. A complete reading guide to the mythological literary fiction novelist.
Madeline Miller (born 1978) is the American novelist who — with The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018) — established herself as the foremost literary writer of mythological fiction, bringing the figures of Greek mythology to life with psychological depth, feminist intelligence, and prose of unusual clarity and beauty. Her novels take characters who exist as types or archetypes in ancient sources and give them interior lives: Patroclus’s devotion to Achilles, Circe’s self-discovery in exile. Both novels have been enormous commercial successes and among the most celebrated literary fiction of their respective years of publication.
Where to Start: Circe (2018)
The essential Miller — and the more fully realised of her two novels. Circe is born in the halls of the sun god Helios and his Titan wife, to the sound of her siblings mocking her human voice. She is neither divine nor mortal, neither powerful nor powerless, and she spends her early life navigating the contempt of beings whose power she cannot match. When she transforms a mortal fisherman she loves into a god, and his resulting cruelty drives her to transform a rival into the monster Scylla, she is exiled by Zeus to the island of Aiaia.
On Aiaia, alone, Circe discovers her gift for witchcraft — transforming living things with herbs and spells — and slowly develops from a powerless outcast into one of mythology’s most feared figures. The great heroes of Greek mythology come to her island: Daedalus brings her what became the thread Ariadne used in the labyrinth; Odysseus comes and stays for a year; the Minotaur is her nephew. Circe watches the world from her island and is changed by what passes through it.
Miller writes Circe as a woman whose great transformation is the discovery of her own agency — that she can act, that the consequences of her actions are her responsibility and also her power, and that the way gods and heroes perceive her (a witch, a danger, a tool) is not the full truth of who she is. The feminist argument is present throughout but never schematic; it emerges from the character rather than being imposed on her.
The Song of Achilles (2011)
Miller’s debut — and a love story of great emotional force. Patroclus, the exiled prince who becomes Achilles’s companion, narrates the novel from their childhood meeting through their time on Cheiron’s mountain, their arrival at Troy, the long siege, and Achilles’s choice of glory over life. Miller draws primarily on the Iliad and the ancient tradition of their relationship, rendering what Homer treats as friendship as something explicitly more.
The novel’s power derives from Patroclus’s perspective — he watches Achilles’s choices, which he cannot change, with complete knowledge of their cost. The reader who knows the Iliad reads the novel toward a known ending; the reader who doesn’t is surprised. Either way, the ending arrives with the weight of inevitability fully placed. The Orange Prize winner for 2012; more immediately emotionally impactful than Circe, if slightly less complex as a character study.
Reading Madeline Miller
Miller’s two novels are best understood as companion pieces — different figures from the same mythological world, explored with the same commitment to psychological reality and feminist intelligence. Begin with Circe for the more fully realised character study; read The Song of Achilles for the more purely romantic and emotionally devastating experience. Both are among the finest literary fiction published in their respective years.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Madeline Miller?
Circe (2018) is the most widely recommended starting point and Miller's most fully realised novel — a first-person account of the witch Circe, daughter of the sun god Helios, across the full span of Greek mythology from before the Trojan War to after Odysseus's voyage. Circe is a minor figure in Homer, glimpsed in a single book of the Odyssey; Miller gives her an interior life, a development arc, and a feminist argument about how women with power are perceived and managed in a world governed by male gods and heroes. The Song of Achilles is the better choice for readers who want Miller's most purely romantic novel.
What is Circe about?
Circe (2018) follows the witch Circe — born to a Titan father and a naiad mother, neither mortal nor divine, discovering in herself the ability to transform living things — from her childhood among the Olympian gods through her exile to the island of Aiaia, where she develops her powers while the great figures of Greek mythology pass through her life: Daedalus and Icarus, the Minotaur, Odysseus, and finally Telemachus. Miller writes Circe as a woman slowly discovering that the power to act — even constrained power, even power that must be hidden — changes everything about one's relationship to the world and to oneself.
What is The Song of Achilles about?
The Song of Achilles (2011) is narrated by Patroclus — Achilles's companion and, in Miller's telling, his great love — from their childhood together through the Trojan War and its catastrophic conclusion. Miller takes the most celebrated relationship in Greek mythology and renders it as a complete love story, following Patroclus's perspective through all the events Homer records and many he doesn't. The novel's emotional force derives from the reader's knowledge (if they know the Iliad) of the inevitable ending, which Patroclus approaches with full awareness. Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012.
Do Circe and The Song of Achilles need to be read in any order?
The two novels are entirely standalone — different characters, different arcs, the same mythological world. Achilles and Odysseus appear as supporting characters in Circe (Odysseus more significantly), but Circe does not appear in The Song of Achilles. The novels can be read in any order. Most readers begin with Circe (it is the more recent and more polished novel) and then read The Song of Achilles; others begin with Achilles and use it as an introduction to Miller's style. Both are complete in themselves and neither enriches the other significantly.
