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Persephone by Madeline Miller: What We Know

Madeline Miller (Circe, The Song of Achilles) recently announced a new book she’s working on based

If you’re not familiar with the basic contours of the tale, Persephone was said to have

Her mother, Demeter the Goddess of Agriculture, was distraught and prevented anything from growing once she was

However, because Persephone had eaten a single pomegranate seed during her time in the underworld, possibly because

This myth is often used to explain why nothing grows in the winter (presumably the times that

Miller previously discussed the Persephone myth on NPR with Get Lit back in May 2021

“Hades and Persephone in particular is such an interesting character, because that whole story is such a

I feel like every time every little millimeter that you turn it, you get something different every

At the time, Miller stated she didn’t have immediate plans to write about Persephone, but clearly

You can read the full blog post here, but a few parts of it give us some

Though he was a gloomy and frightening god, the ancients never saw Hades as evil

Instead, Miller describes it as more of a situation involving a father giving away his daughter without

So it was with her father’s permission that Hades took the girl—as polite as it

She is the incarnation of that ancient saying (supposed to make a sad man happy, and a

Of course, Miller wrote this blog post over a decade ago, so it’s entirely possible she

But I already love the types of ideas she seems to be toying with, so I am

For now, you can check out my reviews of Circe and The Song of Achilles, if you’

Also note that there’s a limited series adaptation of Circe that’s in the works at