Author Madeline Miller.
Madeline Miller’s latest novel takes us back to her fully realized world of mythical Greece. Her first book, The Song of Achilles, delved into the romance between Achilles and Patroclus. Her latest, Circe (Little, Brown and Company), sets its sights on exploring the life of the titular goddess, daughter of the sun god Helios. Here, Miller explores the fantastic stories that have shaped her own reading life.
What did you read as a kid?
I was an obsessive, constant reader, and there were usually several books that stood out at each stage of my life. But for this, I think I have to highlight Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien. This book, which is about a group of rats and mice who have been cruelly experimented on and who have, as a result, elevated intelligence, I found so gripping and heart-stopping that when my mother, who was reading it to me, put it aside for the night, I couldn’t bear to stop. I got a flashlight and finished the book under the covers by myself. This was the start of a long tradition of reading late at night in secret, living through so many book journeys in those silent hours.
What did you read in elementary school?
Watership Down by Richard Adams. A brilliant, exciting novel that speaks to children and adults alike. Since my early discovery of it I have reread it dozens of times, and I always find something new in this adventure of a band of refugees fleeing violence and searching for a home. Yes, these refugees are rabbits, but after the first page you don’t really think of it. Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and the rest are drawn with thoughtfulness, complexity and, yes, humanity. The plot is exciting, with an impressively epic scope. I didn’t realize this until I was older, but the novel is steeped in Virgil’s Aeneid, Greek tragedy and other ancient sources.
What did you read in college?
I’m going to cheat and pick two. The first is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. I read all the novels she had written to date in one gulping year and loved them all, but this was my favourite. It was a revelation to me in every way: the brutal subject matter of oppression and misogyny, the powerful storytelling, the love of language, and Atwood’s brilliantly interior narrator. I had never read anything like it, and I still return to it as a masterpiece.
And Heartburn by Nora Ephron. This novel is based on Ephron’s real life and the disintegration of her marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein. The main character is pregnant, twice-married and obsessed with cooking, none of which had any relevance for me, but I still felt the story as deeply as if it were my own. Ephron mixes her trademark incisive social commentary and humour with real, bring-you-to-tears bitterness and poignancy.
What have you read as an adult?
King Lear, by Shakespeare. This play feels as though it has all of humanity in it, from our most noble, beautiful impulses to our basest and most ugly. It is a story of family dysfunction, of courage and cowardice, of deepest love and also hate. In particular, I love its depiction of how years of wielding unchecked power and hearing nothing but yes can turn someone into a bully, tyrant and fool at once – but it is still possible to find your way back. Every time I read it, I find something new in its pages.
The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka. This novel, about Japanese picture brides coming to America in the early 20th century, is astonishing in its force and intimacy. Writing a novel in the first-person plural (the wives speak as a group) is a huge risk, but it pays off with an incantatory intensity that lingers long after the book is over.
What are you reading right now?
Anything by Lily King, but particularly Father of the Rain, which is a brutally frank story of a young girl growing up with a complicated, charismatic, cruel and narcissistic father. The narrator is fierce, smart and compassionate, but she is also deeply wounded and bound to her father’s narrative about her life. This story tells, among other things, how she comes to write her own story.
Madeline Miller will appear in conversation at the Toronto International Festival of Authors on Oct. 28 at 4 p.m.; festivalofauthors.ca.