I can see why my wife Z loves this book. It’s well written and rich with themes of individuality and motherhood, of womanhood and misogyny, of friendship and romance, of pride and shame, of love and cruelty. For most the time I spent reading this book I thought it a hodgepodge of tales until the final chapters when Miller brought the story to a sustained climax and completed Circe’s character arc elegantly and to great catharsis. Reading this work of Miller’s you appreciate her well earned knowledge not just of Ancient Greek mythology but also of the Heraclean efforts women of all ages have undertaken to remain whole and true despite the forces that threaten to tear them apart. This is as much a book about Titans and Olympians as it is about the difficulties of being a person of integrity. Integrity not in the abstract terms of flaw and virtue but in the bloody, scarring, fleshbinding terms of human experience.