Madeline Miller · 2018 · exile

Madeline Miller's second novel, giving the witch of the Odyssey her own thousand years. Circe is born into the house of Helios with no gift anybody values, discovers witchcraft, turns a rival into a monster and is exiled to an island for it - where the whole of Greek myth comes past her door and she stays put.

1. 1
   Colchis

   The halls of Helios, where a Titan's daughter with a mortal voice and hawk-yellow eyes is despised by her whole family - and her brother Aeetes leaves to rule Colchis, and she discovers that what she can do has a name: pharmakeia.

2. 2
   Aiaia

   Exiled by Zeus to an island traditionally placed at Monte Circeo on the Italian coast - and she spends a hundred human lifetimes there learning herbs, taming lions, and turning sailors who have earned it into pigs.

3. 3
   Scylla's strait

   The Messina narrows, where the nymph she turned into a monster out of jealousy now eats six men from every passing ship - and Circe sails through with Daedalus, and cannot undo it, and has to watch.

4. 4
   Knossos

   Crete, and her sister Pasiphae in labour with the Minotaur - and Daedalus builds the labyrinth, and later the wings, and his son Icarus flies too near Circe's own father and falls.

5. 5
   Aiaia

   Back to the island for centuries: Medea and Jason asking to be cleansed, Hermes bringing gossip, Odysseus for a year, and a son called Telegonus who grows up and kills his own father with a stingray spine.

6. 6
   Scylla's strait

   At the end she goes back with Telemachus and finishes what she started - Trygon's poison and her own blood, and the monster that has eaten sailors for a thousand years turned to stone.

7. 7
   Aiaia

   Penelope stays on as the island's next witch, and Circe brews a draught to make herself mortal - the last pages of a novel about a goddess choosing to be able to die.