Gods and monsters, heroes and mortals. I’ve always loved the stories of the Greeks, from Homer to Edith Hamilton to Mary Renault. Madeline Miller joined the list several years ago with her novel The Song of Achilles, and now casts a spell with Circe (Little Brown, digital galley). You may remember Circe as the sorceress who seduced Odysseus and turned his sailors into pigs, but Miller gives us her own epic story so she becomes a woman for the ages. The neglected daughter of the god of the sun, Helios, young Circe displays little aptitude at being a nymph among many. But when she turns her rival Scylla into a sea monster, she is banished to an island where she hones her skill as a witch, using herbs to heal and taming wild animals. Zeus, Prometheus, Medea, Odysseus, and the Minotaur all play a part, but Circe is the glittering but sympathetic star. You go, girl!
Meg Wolitzer didn’t know about the #MeToo movement when she was writing The Female Persuasion (Riverhead/Penguin, digital galley), but it’s a frat boy’s unwanted sexual advances that motivate shy college freshman Greer Kadetsky to speak up at noted feminist Faith Frank’s guest lecture. That the boy essentially got away with his brutish behavior is what so frustrates Greer, whom Faith singles out after her speech. Several years later, Greer will go to work for Faith and eventually discover the compromises her mentor made along the way, of how time can temper ideals. Intertwined with Greer and Faith’s lives are those of Greer’s boyfriend, whose promising career is derailed by a family tragedy, and of her college roommate, whom she will betray so as to keep Faith’s attention on herself. It’s an absorbing and well-told story, one I liked but didn’t love. I had the same experience with Wolitzer’s The Interestings. Both books are like clothes I admire in a store window, thinking that’s just my style, but then I try them on and they don’t suit somehow. Oh, well. Maybe next time.
Three very different first novels captured my attention. Christine Mangan’s atmospheric Tangerine (HarperCollins, digital galley) owes a lot to Patricia Highsmith and Daphne du Maurier. Fragile Alice Shipley is living quietly in 1956 Tangier with her obtuse husband John McAlister when her former Bennington College roommate Lucy Mason arrives on her doorstep. Intrigue past and present unfold, as Mangan switches between Alice and Lucy as narrators. Whereas Alice is overwhelmed by the crowded heat of Tangier, Lucy embraces its exoticism and suspects John of having married Alice for her money. What happens is pretty predictable, but the finale still chills. In Stray City 
(Custom House, review copy), Chelsey Johnson charms with her coming-out and coming-of-age tale. Narrator Andrea escapes the tyranny of her straitlaced Nebraska family to be a part of the “Lesbian Mafia” in 1990s Portland. After a bad break-up and a lot to drink, she hooks up with a male friend Ryan and becomes pregnant. The second half of the book is set 10 years later, when Andrea’s daughter Lucia wants to know about her father. Lots of nostalgia here for being young and finding your tribe. Sally Franson’s A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out (Dial Press, review copy) finds an English lit grad whose star is rising at a trendy boutique ad agency. I reviewed it for the Minneapolis-Star Tribune, https://tinyurl.com/y79yyd9r
On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 