Books Like Circe

Why Each Pick

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller's first novel and the obvious next read. Patroclus narrates his friendship and love with Achilles, from boyhood to the Trojan War, in the same clear, lyrical prose, and Odysseus appears in both books. It is more of a love story than Circe and covers one human lifetime rather than centuries. Its ending follows the Iliad, so expect heartbreak.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Another woman who lives for centuries, shaped by a bargain with a powerful god. In 1714, Addie trades her soul to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, until a young man in a New York bookshop remembers her. Like Circe, it is about loneliness, resilience and leaving a mark on the world, but it is historical fantasy with a romance at its center.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

For readers who loved watching Circe learn witchcraft through patience and practice. Ged, a gifted boy, studies magic at a school on an island, makes a terrible mistake and spends the rest of the book facing it across an archipelago. Le Guin's magic, like Miller's, depends on knowing the true nature of things. It is short, at 183 pages, and written like a legend.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

A solitary narrator, an island-like world and a slow reckoning with how he came to be there. Piranesi lives alone in an endless house with tides and thousands of statues, recording everything in his journals, until signs of other people appear. Like Circe's years on her island, it finds beauty and meaning in isolation. It is shorter, at 272 pages, and a mystery rather than a myth.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The gods walk among humans here too, but in modern America. Shadow Moon, just out of prison, takes a job with a con man called Mr. Wednesday and is drawn into a war between the old gods immigrants brought with them and new gods of media and technology. It shares Circe's view of gods as powerful and petty, but it is darker, longer and more violent, with sexual content.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

For readers who loved Circe as a woman claiming her own life. Janie Crawford tells a friend the story of her three marriages in early twentieth-century Florida and how she found her voice and independence. There are no gods or magic, but the shape is the same: a woman looking back on decades of choices. It is short, at 219 pages, and written partly in Southern dialect.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

A first-person life story of a woman who is mistreated and underestimated and refuses to accept either. Jane grows from an unloved orphan into a governess who insists on her own dignity, even with the man she loves. Like Circe, it charts a woman's inner life over many years and turns on hard-won self-respect. It is a Victorian gothic novel, 532 pages long, with no myth.

Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

For a younger reader in your house, or for a lighter take on the same gods. Twelve-year-old Percy learns he is the son of Poseidon and sets off across America to recover Zeus's stolen lightning bolt and stop a war among the Olympians. Both books bring Greek myth into a personal story, but Riordan's is a fast, funny middle-grade adventure, while Circe is reflective and adult.