“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis
The Greeks, really? Really!
I was not a fan of Homer. I read The Iliad in high school, took a few tests on it and forgot most of the story. Recalling only, as many do, the beauteous kidnapped Helen whose face launched a thousand ships. I think what drew me to read Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles was the fact that my father loved the stories of the ancient Greeks. I thought maybe the story in novel form would help me understand why.
A first novel for Madeline Miller, taking her ten years to write, it retells in prose, The Iliad’s recounting of the Trojan War. One of history greatest love stories, it details the boyhood friendship and ultimately the love between Achilles, the son of King Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis and the exiled prince, Patroclus.
I admire Miller’s courage in taking on not only the challenge of writing this story as a novel but in writing it in the first person, from the point of view of Patroclus. Writing in the first person is not for the faint heart. Miller is a Greek and Latin scholar whose meticulous research forms the backbone of her book and more than qualifies her to have written it.
The pages are full of riveting characters: fierce Thetis, Chiron, the good centaur who mentors both Achilles and Patroclus, Briseis the slave girl who comes between Achilles and Patroclus, greedy Agamemnon, soulless Pyrrhus, and finally, Achilles, himself, called “Aristos Achaion” – “The Best of the Greeks”.
The Song of Achilles transforms a story that many modern readers find difficult to comprehend in it original form, making it easy to read and understand. The love scenes between Patroclus and Achilles were both effective and tastefully done but at the same time complete.
It contains all the elements today’s readers look for in a story: passion, betrayal, loyalty, love, brutal battles, heroes and villains. I recommend that you read it if you are looking for something a little bit different.
If you live in New Hampshire, Madeline Miller is reading at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord on April 12 at 7 PM.
As for my question as to why my father would have liked it, he was fascinated by fate being no stranger to it himself. The Song of Achilles is full of it.
