The Song of Achilles - May 2019 Book Group discussion thread

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Sharkie
Sharkie
May 2019
4:47pm, 5 May 2019
14,754 posts
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Sharkie
I have an admission I can make in here. I've promised my copy to Linds - I read it when it first came out ('came out' hahahahaha) in pb. Only I can't find it anywhere and suspect it went to the charity shop about a year later when I recalled feeling something like Dipps...

...a fun and fast enjoyable read (no more than that) 'til half to two thirds way through then I got sort of fed up with it and whizzed through the last part feeling a bit let down.

God knows why I've just bought 'Circe' by the same author. Because it was only £3.99 in sainsburysI suspect.
westmoors
westmoors
May 2019
5:21pm, 5 May 2019
3,204 posts
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westmoors
Just finished. Have always had an interest in Greek mythology and so really enjoyed this although I was not enamoured with the 'narrating after death'. Otherwise, I thought it a good take on the story of Achilles.
westmoors
westmoors
May 2019
5:23pm, 5 May 2019
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westmoors
Agree with Dipps re the heel. When Paris shot the arrow I was surprised when it hit Achilles in the back.
McGoohan
McGoohan
May 2019
5:47pm, 5 May 2019
39,438 posts
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McGoohan
*Why am I reading this thread when I still have 150 pages left?*

*Goes away* ;-)
McGoohan
McGoohan
May 2019
8:59am, 13 May 2019
39,490 posts
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McGoohan
This was an unusual one. Liebling had read it before and when I read it this time, she picked it up and read it again. Useful as we could compare notes and she could tell me where I'd gone wrong. ;-)

My first reaction was negative. I'd got about 50 pages in and thought I had a handle on it. All references to gods and demi-gods to that point were a bit second- or third-hand: it was all very, 'It is said his grandfather was Apollo' or 'He sailed with Heracles himself.' I had an expectation that she was rewriting the Greek myths in a style where all the gods-stuff would be explained away. Then, with Achilles' mum showing up, we get full-on gods.

I felt a bit cheated then as she'd not written the book I'd wanted her to write. Not very reasonable of me.

As I read on, it won me back. What little I knew of the Trojan Wars made me think, Achilles' heel, big horsey and neither of those things were in the book. I did know that Patroclus was supposed to die before Achilles so I wondered how he was going to narrate after he'd died. Well, it was super easy for him - his spirit continues the narration. That actually worked for me. It was in keeping with the myth and the internal logic - if he didn't get a proper tomb, his soul would never be at rest.

What Madeline Miller has done is to take something that can seem very dry and stuffy and ancient (because it is) and breathe vivid life into it, give them actual characters whether humans, gods or somewhere inbetween. Obviously, being a snooty space-pirate captain, I wanted to hate it but when I got to the final page I had to wipe a tear from my eye and go and compose myself before telling Liebling I thought it was, 'A load of rubbish!' ;-)

I've scored it an 8. May have a rethink to a 9. Loved it.
Bazoaxe
Bazoaxe
May 2019
6:12pm, 19 May 2019
14,585 posts
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Bazoaxe
Yeah. I quite enjoyed this book and it kept my interest throughout. Good choice.
McGoohan
McGoohan
May 2019
8:40am, 22 May 2019
39,619 posts
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McGoohan
Here's a funny thing I noticed in Waterstones. Pat Barker's latest, The Silence of the Girls en.wikipedia.org

Here's the blurb:
"When her city falls to the Greeks, led to victory by the god-like warrior Achilles, Briseis's old life is shattered. Abducted and shipped to the Greek camp on the battleground at Troy, she goes from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to Achilles as a prize of honour. She's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long, bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters.

As told in The Iliad, the Trojan War was a quarrel between men - over Helen, stolen from her home and spirited to Troy, a voiceless female icon of male desire. But what of the women in this story, silenced by their fates? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead?

In this magnificent novel of the Trojan War, Pat Barker summons the voices of Briseis and her fellow women to tell this mythic story anew, foregrounding their experiences against the backdrop of savage battle between men. One of the great contemporary writers on war and its collateral damage, Pat Barker here reimagines the most famous of all wars in literature, charting one woman's journey through the chaos of the Greek encampment, as she struggles to free herself and to become the author of her own story."

So, it's the flip-side of Song of Achilles which depicted a much kinder treatment of Breisis (at first anyway). Has anyone read the Pat Barker book?
Deinonychus
Deinonychus
May 2019
9:02am, 22 May 2019
114 posts
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Deinonychus
Not yet, but I have a copy.
Sharkie
Sharkie
May 2019
9:04am, 22 May 2019
14,820 posts
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Sharkie
On my list too.
McGoohan
McGoohan
May 2019
9:07am, 22 May 2019
39,620 posts
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McGoohan
It was right next to Circe on the display table too. What will Madeline Miller do when she runs out of Iliad and Odyssey?

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When Adrian Chiles was a little boy his greatest wish was that when he grew up he'd present a t...

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