| Madeline Miller | |
| Birth Date: | 24 July 1978[1] |
| Birth Place: | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Education: | Brown University (BA, MA) University of Chicago Yale University |
| Notableworks: | The Song of Achilles Circe |
Madeline Miller (born July 24, 1978) is an American novelist, author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018). Miller spent ten years writing The Song of Achilles while she worked as a teacher of Latin and Greek. The novel tells the story of the love between the mythological figures Achilles and Patroclus; it won the Orange Prize for Fiction, making Miller the fourth debut novelist to win the prize. She is a 2019 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Miller was born on July 24, 1978, in Boston and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia.[2] [3] Miller attended Brown University, completing both a bachelor's and master's degree in Classics (2000 and 2001, respectively). She started writing her first novel, The Song of Achilles, during the final year of her bachelor's after codirecting a production of Troilus and Cressida. She has said that the scene in the play that shows Patroclus' death sparked her interest in telling his story and pushed her to start writing.[4] Prior to this moment, she already had a deep interest in Greek mythology and classics. Her mother, a librarian, started reading her The Iliad at five years old and she started learning Latin at 11.
As a little girl she had a keen fascination for Greek Mythology. Growing up on the Upper East Side, she spent a lot of her time at the Met fascinating over warriors, heroes and deities. [5] Her mother, a librarian, started reading her The Iliad and Odyssey at five years old during bedtime. One of her favorite warriors at the Met is a marble statue of a wounded Amazon warrior which has blood drops on the side of her breast. She started learning Latin at 11.
After completing her degrees, Miller then went on to teach Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students.[6] While working as a teacher, Miller continued work on her novel.
She later studied for a year at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought working towards a PhD and from 2009 to 2010 at the Yale School of Drama for an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism.[7]
She has discussed how Long COVID has affected her life since a February 2020 COVID-19 infection. In an op-ed in The Washington Post in August 2023, she said that having had the disease for three years, she had regained the ability to write but her fatigue had worsened.[8]
See main article: The Song of Achilles. The Song of Achilles, Miller's debut novel, was released in September 2011.[3] [9] The book took her ten years to write.[2] [3] Set during the Greek Heroic Age, the novel tells the story from Patroclus' point of view and the bond that grew between him and Achilles.[6]
Here is a list of awards and honors the novel won.
See main article: Circe (novel). Circe, Miller's second novel, was released on April 10, 2018.[10] The book is a modern reimagining told from the perspective of Circe, an enchantress in Greek mythology who is featured in Homer's Odyssey. Circe was ranked the second-greatest book of the 2010s by Paste.[11] Tutor House ranked Circe in its top books for Classics students in 2021. An 8-part miniseries adaptation of the book has been green-lit for HBO Max.[12] Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver are set to write and produce the adaptation.[13]
Miller realized early on that the story of Circe was not being told accurately. The in-depth analysis of Circe highlights how Miller briefly mentions Odysseus in the book.[14] In contrast, in The Odyssey, Circe is merely mentioned. Miller in an interview said that Odysseus' story has been told for 3,000 years and it was time for Circe to be heard. [15] Miller in Circe is channeling many feminist themes: rejection of patriarchal norms, empowerment, and self-reliance. Miller said that Circe is about a woman realizing her true potential and power.[16] Circe was always intended to be a feminist re-telling, and therefore, was given the ultimate re-birth story.
Here is a list of awards and honors the novel won. [17]
A short story originally released as an e-book in 2013. It was later released in hardback in March 2022.[18] The novel is a retelling of the Greek myth Pygmalion from the perspective of the sculptor's statue.[19]
A short story contained within The Song of Achilles and published in a Waterstones Special edition of The Song of Achilles[20] on August 7, 2012, Heracles' Bow takes from the perspective of Philoctetes, how he suffered his snake bite, and his abandonment by his companions. Much of the story takes place as a dialogue between Philoctetes and an imaginary Heracles, though other characters from The Song of Achilles also appear in it.
In December 2021, Miller announced via an Instagram post that she was working on her new novel, about the goddess Persephone.[21]
Miller is known for writing mythological realism.[22] Miller's novels re-imagine stories from Greek mythology, while focusing on themes that she considers timeless, like dysfunctional families and homesickness.[23] [24] She has said that she finds relevance to retelling The Odyssey because it related to "universal human experiences." In an interview, Miller said that she sees genre as "permeable and changeable"[25] but said that her books could be characterized as "either literary adaptation or mythological realism. Or just plain old fiction!". Miller has said though that her approach to the original material was quite different for her two novels. In The Song of Achilles, she took an existing story "hidden in the material already", and for Circe, she challenged the classic texts by taking out Odysseus's voice and replacing it with Circe's,[26] a more "subversive retelling".[27]
Homer has always been a guide for Miller. In reading the Iliad she wondered constantly about who the man in the shadows was. She noted in an interview with Women's Prize titled, "Archives: Q&A with Madeline Miller" that she took great inspiration to write The Song of Achilles after finishing directing her production of Troilus and Cressida. [28] Her main concern for The Song of Achilles was Patroclus. The character of Patroclus came from Homer, but she used Homer as a guide to elaborate more on Patroclus and Achilles' characters. Patroclus' character was created by hints given from Homer: his gentleness and kindness.
Song plays a big role in The Song of Achilles. In the interview with Women's Prize, Miller notes how her knowledge of Achilles being a talented singer is what let her to include songs being significant in the novels. In addition to this, she goes on to note how the word Illiad literally means "The Song of Troy," hence giving her the idea for the book's title. Just how she grew up honoring the deities, warriors, and heroes of Ancient Greek mythology, she felt that she needed to honor the name Illiad in her novel.
Miller told a reporter from The Guardian that her inspirations include David Mitchell, Lorrie Moore, Anne Carson, and Virgil.[29] Miller expressed "hate" and "visceral disgust" towards Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead. As she herself indicated, she hates the "ideas behind it". Instead, she prefers books by James Herriot and Chinua Achebe.
| Year | Work | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | The Song of Achilles | — | [30] | ||
| 2013 | Young Adult/Crossover Fiction | ||||
| — | |||||
| Novel | [31] | ||||
| — | |||||
| Must-Read | |||||
| RUSA CODES Reading List | Historical Fiction | ||||
| Literature | |||||
| 2018 | Circe | — | [32] | ||
| Goodreads Choice Awards | Fantasy | [33] | |||
| Kitschies | Red Tentacle (Novel) | [34] | |||
| — | [35] [36] [37] | ||||
| 2019 | Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence | [38] | |||
| International Book | [39] | ||||
| Books Are My Bag Readers' Awards | Fiction | [40] | |||
| Beautiful Book | |||||
| Indies Choice Book Awards | Adult Fiction | [41] [42] | |||
| — | [43] | ||||
| Mythopoeic Awards | — | [44] | |||
| RUSA CODES Reading List | Historical Fiction | [45] | |||
| — | [46] | ||||
| 2020 | — | [47] [48] |