Circe Audiobook by Madeline Miller

I remember listening to Circe one stormy evening, curled up by my living room window with rain drumming steadily outside. The mood was perfect—there’s something about Greek myth retold that always feels like thunder and wild winds are swirling just for you. Madeline Miller’s reimagining of Circe swept me into a world so vivid, it almost felt as though I could smell the sea salt and hear the distant cries of gods on the wind.

What struck me most deeply was how unexpectedly personal this story became. As someone who’s spent years teaching literature—and who has always wrestled with what it means to find your own voice—it was impossible not to see myself in Circe’s journey. She begins powerless, ignored even among immortals, but through exile and self-discovery she crafts an identity as fierce as any goddess or hero from legend. There’s an intimacy in her loneliness; her yearning for love and belonging, then her hard-won independence, resonates far beyond myth. Miller weaves such raw vulnerability into every moment that I often found myself reflecting on my own life: times I’ve felt exiled from communities or expectations, only to eventually realize those moments were forging my true strengths.

The audiobook format absolutely enhanced this experience for me. Perdita Weeks delivers a performance brimming with nuance—her voice is rich and textured, capable of sliding effortlessly between tenderness and resolve. When she voices Circe’s incantations or confrontations with gods like Hermes or Athena, there’s both power and pain in each syllable; you feel every beat of fear when enemies threaten her island sanctuary and every pulse of triumph as she bends fate toward her will.

One of the delights of this audiobook is how Weeks renders not just Circe herself but also the whole cast—Odysseus’ charisma tinged with sorrow; Daedalus’ gentle intellect; Medea’s simmering intensity—all come alive without feeling caricatured or overwrought. It made even well-known myths feel fresh again.

Of course, no book is without its imperfections. At times I wished the pacing had picked up—the narrative lingers over certain episodes while racing through others (the Minotaur’s birth passes so quickly!), which sometimes jarred me out of immersion. Yet these moments were rare compared to the overall spell cast by Miller’s prose paired with Weeks’ narration.

Perhaps what makes Circe linger long after finishing isn’t just its thrilling blend of ancient myth and modern feminist insight—it’s how bravely it champions transformation: not merely magical shape-shifting, but changing yourself when confronted by heartbreak or adversity. Whether you’re a longtime lover of mythology like me or someone searching for a heroine carving space in a hostile world, you’ll find pieces of your own story reflected back here.

All told, listening to Circe was less like reading history than inhabiting legend—a beautifully rendered tale about making meaning out of exile and becoming powerful on your own terms.