April 26, 2020 – April 28, 2020
Ug. Why do I do this? I decide I’m too tired when I finish a book and that I’ll write about it tomorrow, but then it always turns into an essay instead of my heartfelt blabbing! Oh well.
Circe’s life sucked. There, I just summarized the entire book, but this was another husband recommendation, so I had faith in a happy ending. It didn’t help that each time I asked Amit if there was one he would cryptically say “It has a good ending.” >:|
A while ago I read a tag-along book to the Lunar Chronicles called Stars Above, which was basically the back story to all of our characters that we know and love. And it sucked. Not the writing! I love this author and I loved reading her work, it’s just that every story was “how we got to this awful place” – until the last story that was all sorts of happy.
Reading this book kind of felt the same way. Here was a woman who had a crummy life – and then more of a crummy life – and then a horrible life – and then MORE terribleness! Each chapter seemed like just a new tragedy that was added onto what she already had to endure and carry, because, honestly, that’s what Greek Mythology is.
Yes, they have awesome adventures, but almost all of them end tragically, and usually because the gods are jerks. I guess that matches with the times back then – the world was horrible and unfair and it’s easy/makes sense that there is something out there that is just plain out to get you. It particularly hit me when Circe mentioned that the gods will let you suffer just so you’ll burn more sacrifices to them and give them more prayers, not because of any grand plan or because you fell out of favor with them but just because they were selfish.
It brought into stark contrast my religion and the God I know – and how revolutionary Christ really was. This really was the view of gods in the world at the time, and then Christ shows up and says that there is a God who loves you and knows you and will suffer and die for you – what sort of craziness is that? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? We, mortals, make sacrifices to try and bring God closer to us, but instead, He’s saying that He’ll sacrifice himself to bring us closer to Him.
But our world isn’t the world that Circe lived in, and the only thing that actually seemed to bring her any amount of peace was her witchcraft and her island.
Oh her island. I fell in love with it as she did.
I miss nature. I have always jokingly said that I’m part nature spirit because of how trees and mountains and the ocean affect me. So these descriptions, how she would walk all over the hills and forests and mountains and beaches, it would take me along with her and all I wanted to do was go back to my childhood in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. We lived in the base of a valley in a neighborhood, but my friends lived in the mountains and we would hike through the forests, hopping over streams, climbing redwood trees three stories high just to sit and talk. There was this one particular nice bay tree that had a think branch that hung over the steep part of a hill that we would sit on and talk, our feet dangling 20-30 feet up in the air. The sun warming the forest floor, the smell of dry dust in the air, the echoing sounds of birds and the rhythmic roll of waves, and the fresh breeze coming off the ocean, the very feel on my skin. Now I just have a little pizza slice of a view of the mountains that I can see from my driveway, and for right now it is enough. But I miss my forests. I miss the ocean. Maybe if we moved further east and lived in the mountains my spirit will start feeling more stable and at peace.
On to the next part of Circe’s that I’m apparently dissecting in this review/response/essay, I can argue up one wall and down the other that the truly defining moment of her life was when she chose to become a mother.
I hate being a mother. I love being a mother. I felt so horribly helpless watching her in those early days when her son was a psychopath, then again later when he was just a rebellious teenager who didn’t listen to the realities she was trying to tell him. That fear, that love, that need to never let go – and then having to. I will never forget the day my son got on the bus to go to kindergarten – I cried back to the house and watched Daniel Tiger while eating goldfish with my toddler. That was three and a half years ago, and I’ve had several first days of school since then, but every day I would be lying if I said there wasn’t an undercurrent of bitterness that he’s away from me for so much of the day. That I NEVER get to see him.
And then the virus hit! And it has been – mixed. I think things would be better if he had a WHOLE ISLAND to roam around rather than our small house and yard, and if things weren’t so horribly stressful and being trapped in a fishbowl together, and trying to help him do his schoolwork even though I’m not a teacher… and the other kids… and being sick myself… But at the end of the day, I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad I get to see him so much of the day, and we have time to talk and do things. Yes I referred to him as “devil child” earlier this week when he ran over my barefoot with his bike, and sometimes I want to just shove him outside overnight because he won’t stop practicing being a teenager, but he’s here, and he’s mine.
And I know that won’t be forever. Because as soon as I knew he was coming, I knew my duty was to be his mother. I was to help him grow to be strong and healthy, and to prepare him for the world that he will go off into – that he will leave me for. He turns 18 a few weeks after his high school graduation, and will be leaving for his Church Mission for two years after that, then off to college and careers and life – and adulthood. I felt like I saw my future as she watched her son leave to begin his empire – standing on the shore and seeing him disappear over the horizon. And I know I will feel that crippling loneliness, and wish for the little boy who would appear in bed with me in the morning, asleep with his little arms around my neck.
Circe isn’t special. I would hold up the sky for him or for any of my other children.
I’ve known what it is like to be alone. I’ve known what it is like to be disappointed by men, to be so sure of their caring for me that I made huge sacrifices for them only to have them leave me. So when I got to the part where her first boyfriend ditches her for his own narcissism I couldn’t stop reading – even though it obviously wasn’t getting any happier. It was late and Amit rolled over and asked why I was awake and all I could blubber was “He left her! There is no love in the world!”
Things got better once she met Daedalus. She had “dated” Hermes, but Daedalus felt real in a way that she never had again until the end of the book, not even with Odysseus. It was easy to play “what if” – he said he would have been a poor husband because of his inventing, but she was equally in love with her own work in witchcraft and I think they would have been good companions. And then when he died, and she stayed the same as ever… the truly endless sorrow, that she was immortal and all the mortals she would come to know and love would one day die – but she would be left behind in her loneliness.
That loneliness led to her other lovers, even Odysseus, until the end when she falls in love with her son’s half brother/old lover’s son. I was reminded of this one Arabian Tale (I have the giant, three-volume translation where they don’t sugar coat anything) where these two women are in love with this one guy (and sort of each other- it’s complicated) and become his wives but then they both have sons but then they both fall in love with each other’s son and ug, the drama! I got the same feeling at first, that feeling of ick, but it didn’t stay that way. The author painted a picture of him being a man instead of a boy like her son still was. Of being the type of man she really did need instead of a hero who had washed up on her shore. The type of man she deserved, who was steady and stable and devoted to her – not in her divinity, but like any mortal would love any other mortal.
And in him, she found the helper she needed for her redemption. And her hope for a life that is frail and beautiful and full in a way that only a mortal life can be. You see her happy ending. After everything she endured in her life, I wondered what was this “good ending” that my husband told me about, so when it came it was like a little bit of my heart healed. Because you see, I’ve gone through a lot of rot in my life and I need stories like this where there can be hope for a “good” ending for me as well.
When she said that the gods are really the ones who are dead even though they had immortality I felt like I had just bit into the clove that was left in the curry. There were many themes, but the fact that in the end, she decided to choose a mortal life made me feel that this was the entire point of her life – that everything she had ever gone through was leading her to this moment of self-discovery. And that last moment, when the book ends with her drinking the potion and you don’t know if it worked or not – I still feel like I’m holding my breath, but in a good way. I’m going to take it on faith that the life she saw herself have is the one she got to live.
This is a really good book for learning about Greek Methonoly and would be much more interesting to high schoolers than reading The Odyssey. I mentioned it during my book club on Thursday and was surprised at how many people have already read it. So clearly it would be a hit if I recommended it for our reading list next year. 😛
Reading Responses at 2am - SPOILER ALERT! 