Even though her first attempt at escaping his clutches with her daughter failed, the second time was final. Madeline Miller’s “Galatea” is a 21st century “response” to Ovid’s interpretation of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, told from the perspective of the previously nameless sculpture turned human, Galatea herself.

Galatea’s bitterness, pain and rage are palpable as is her resolve to change the trajectory of her life. Miller’s approach to the story by placing us in the mind of Galatea makes her existence less romanticized by showing how concepts of ownership and expectations of beauty are stifling to her. Her 2011 debut, “ The Song of Achilles,” is an adaptation of “ The Iliad,” told from Patroclus’s point of view. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Madeline Miller has such a gift with words, with creating real characters you immediately care about and identify with.Madeline Miller really has a great way of bringing to life this ancient setting and weaving the myths we know and have read with her own thoughts, filling in the blanks, sometimes changing a few details in the process.

He demands his wife’s meekness, devotion, beauty, and perfection, even as his own hair thins and belly fattens. Galatea,” which was originally released in the anthology “ XO Orpheus: Fifty New Myths,” begins with its lead character in repose. For more books like Galatea, you can’t go wrong with Madeline Miller’s two bestselling novels, Circe and The Song of Achilles.

A tutor taught Paphos some lessons, and she passed these on to Galatea in secret, but her husband sends the tutor away after a fit of jealousy.

But perhaps what’s most revealing about the release of “Galatea ” is less what it says and more what it signals: Miller’s ascendancy to the kind of literary stardom that transmutes her work into something to be possessed and displayed. Miller portrays Pygmalion in an essentially unfavorable light, comparing his disgust for prostitutes and other women he has interacted with and his obsession with perfection and “pure” women who are capable of “blushing” to modern-day “incels”.

Miller holds an MA in Classics from Brown University, studied in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms, and taught Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students for over a decade. The myth has inspired numerous works of art, literature and productions on stage, on television and in movies. Audible should have included it in a membership, or it should have been released with some other short stories. Galatea is this brave, beautiful, intelligent person, surviving Pygmalion's wrath and oppression for so long, and trying to shield her daughter from him.