Circe--

"But that was only a shape I'd been poured into."

I’ve had a great time these past six weeks, meeting on Sunday mornings to discuss the novel Circe, by Madeline Miller, with a brilliant group of careful readers. There’s something fantastic about moving through a novel in discussion with others. So glad we did this!

“My other uncles ran to my father’s palace, beards flapping, fears spilling from their mouths. They were a motley group: river-men with muscles like the trucks of trees, brine-soaked mer-gods with crabs hanging from their beards, stringy old-timers with seal meat in their teeth….”

Have you read it?

It’s a visually complicated novel, rich in imagery, laced with mythology and in conversation with life—mortality, identity, the role of story, women’s health, war, questions of manliness, childbearing and raising, art, ideas, community and more.

“But that was only a shape I’d been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”

Stories can be told and retold, given new forms. We, too, can claim a new sense of our own identity, ourselves, our stories and personal mythology.

There’s an old understanding that stories are about points of change: who is changed, how and why? In this novel, those changes are huge, fantastical, visceral, visual.

Men turn into gods, goddess shift into monsters, a minor goddess makes herself into a witch, a sorceress, and then—of all surreal bodily shifts, a mother, a parent, a caretaker.

“The land was drenched in boiling gouts of blood so potent that rare flowers sprang up where they fell.”

— …“gouts of blood,” is such unusual language, and I love the dynamic of rare flowers springing up, for the image those words conjure….

I could list as many quotes are there are sentences in this novel, more or less.

What are the points of change in your work, in your life, in your stories? Are you making the gestures big enough, deep enough, specific enough, clear enough, visceral enough, emotional enough, sharp enough, high enough, quick enough, painful enough, meaningful enough, mysterious enough?

Good times! I appreciate all who joined in.

xo