When you are very young, every book can be a miracle, if you’re so inclined. It’s always a new world, exciting and unique, something you haven’t experienced before. Your mind is blown and then blown again. Nothing exists but the book in your hands, you are completely absorbed and deaf to the world.

If you keep reading, year after year, some of this magic will eventually evaporate. You’ll see that not all writers really have much new to say, you’ll discover their prejudices and cheap tricks, you’ll realise that some of them don’t even write that well. It’s a specific kind of loss.

It’s not only a loss, of course. Your taste will develop and you’ll appreciate nuances you didn’t notice before, you’ll be able to value things that are deeper and darker and more complex. You’ll realise that making an effort when reading a book is not necessarily a bad thing and can yield amazing rewards. But I don’t know any reader who doesn’t yearn for that feeling of getting completely lost in a book, caught up in a story that simply does not let you go. And that feeling becomes more and more difficult to experience, because your inner critic is always awake and her ear is so attuned by now that nothing escapes her – the clumsy sentence, the stereotypical female character, the lazy plot device, she’ll spot them all a mile away.

Sometimes, however, the Gods are merciful and you read the right book at the right time and it has just the right balance of infectiousness and insight, drama and depth. This happened to me last weekend when I read Circe. I think it often helps when you don’t expect to love a book, you’ll go in maybe too relaxed or overconfident and the book will snare you with its charms. I was hooked from the first sentence and remained hooked until the end.

Circe is, as I’m sure you have guessed (if you haven’t read it yet), a retelling of a Greek myth. Witch on an island, turning men into pigs, lover of Odysseus, you know the story. And while these things do happen in the book, it’s not what it’s about. If you want to read this for the love story between Circe and the Best of the Greeks, you’ll likely to be disappointed, as it takes up rather little of the book. This is a full, rich tale of a woman’s life that does, indeed, include a famous affair, but also a lonely childhood, self-discovery, horrible mistakes, work, motherhood, grief and many kinds of love.

Saying that a book is about female empowerment sounds trite, but the truth is I did feel empowered. There are many things you can enjoy in Circe. The voice is poetic and beautiful and with a touch of epicness, but still modern. The relationships are drawn with such loving care that I fell for everybody Circe fell for (and it’s a special pleasure to see more mature love that feels as romantic – or in this book much more so – as a teenage one). The women are good and bad, shallow, vengeful, weak, loving, monstrous, powerful, smart, lost, found and sometimes all at once. Circe herself is believable and sympathetic and watching her timidness and terror turn into strength is inspiring.

The thing I most identified with was the importance of being yourself, of making something of yourself, something that is impossible – or at least very difficult – to take from you. For Circe, it’s her witchcraft, her carefully honed skills that give her a sense of satisfaction and joy, but also protection and power. It doesn’t mean she loves her work more than she loves her child or that she is never sad or alone, because she has her herbs. But she always has something that is her own.

I don’t know if Circe is what people would call a literary masterpiece, probably not. It is too gripping for that, has too much melodrama and romance, monsters and beauty. Daniel Mandelsohn famously said of Miller’s previous book that it has “the head of a young adult novel, the body of the ‘Iliad’ and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland” and people have said similar things of Circe. I don’t care. And I’m also done with this casual degrading of everything related to women, even if it’s Barbara Cartland.

It is perfectly possible that had I read this at a different moment in my life, not so desperately needing affirmation and inspiration, I would have seen the book differently as well. I don’t care about that either. Circe kept me up until the early morning and assured me I was a witch, too. Being accused of less than impeccable literary tastes is a very, very small price to pay for that.

PS Greek myths seem to be having a moment. Pictured are the Stephen Fry retellings I’ve already finished, the new Odyssey translation by Emily Wilson, Circe and two modern takes on Antigone that have been recommended to me recently.