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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Last year, a friend recommended the book Gone with the Wind. I balked at the idea, at the mere size of it. But I read it, because I trust her book choices with every fiber of my being. And I loved it. Never had I read a single book that was as epic, as sweeping, as Gone with the Wind. Until now. My blogger friend Ashley gave it a phenomenal review, and it turns out that Helen of Troy had been sitting in my bookcase all this time. I had bought it at a used bookstore about two years ago. WEIRD! Back to the book: Helen of Troy, which covers the entire life of infamous Helen - from her childhood to her death - has scenes of heart wrenching beauty. There were times when it flowed so well that it was like a song. It's brilliance. It's long, but every page is filled with detail and meaning. I'm not a big historical fiction person. Too often the story gets lost in the historical details, and before I know what's happening I'm stuck in a history lesson in high school, my ancient teacher leaning over me, hair growing profusely out of his ears. Helen of Troy is nothing like this. It made me interested in Troy, in the Greek Gods, in the stories of Achilles, Hector and Cassandra. Speaking of Troy...the fall of Troy in the book. Oh.My. Gosh. How can I capture the excitement, the dread of this event? Breathless. Heart-pounding in my ears. Gut-wrenching. It's maybe the best book I've read this year, and I've read some VERY good books this year. You won't want to rent it, you'll want to own it and read it every year.
This started with great promise, the back story and childhood of Helen was detailed and unique. A retelling where this heroine finally had some spine! Her developing relationship with Menelaus was heart breaking,
Then... Nothing? Just pages to turn.
It seemed that once they left Sparta that I was reading a series of vignettes that allowed the author to cross items off her outline. There were no other characters to love, or even hate.
Then... Nothing? Just pages to turn.
It seemed that once they left Sparta that I was reading a series of vignettes that allowed the author to cross items off her outline. There were no other characters to love, or even hate.
Awful. Eight year old Faith may have liked this but no self respecting adult or even teenager would. Dialogue and descriptions and the characters are all really badly written. I could feel myself losing brain cells with every word.
Part of the reason for my low rating of this book might just be my own fault - with life being as unpredictable as it is, I was bouncing between the physical edition of this book, the ebook, and the audiobook, which made for a somewhat disjointed reading experience. I don't fault George for that 0 the fault was entirely my own.
But nevertheless, I had such a difficult time truly connecting with the characters in this story. The Trojan war and Helen's role in the conflict is, in my mind, the most dramatic of all the Greek myths, and I went into this expecting a character study of a vibrant, passionate young woman whose only crime was being the daughter of a god. Yet Helen never truly came to life in any of the formats I came across - if anything, she was almost frustratingly passive at times. Even during the tournament of suitors, in which she insisted on choosing her husband and challenging Melelaus to an impossible physical feat in exchange for her heart, Helen seemed to just "roll" with things rather than taking charge. Despite her complicated relationship with the gods - namely her father, Zeus, and goddess half-sister, Aphrodite - and their tendency to treat mortals like toys, Helen seems pretty content to sit back and let them do as they like with her life. I understand a certain amount of piety and subservience to the gods, given the culture and time period, but I could never quite reconcile Helen's simultaneous frustration with these higher powers with her insatiable curiosity about her divine heritage. Perhaps this is a very human attitude to hold, but it didn't quite translate on paper as a complex characterization so much as a bafflingly vague one.
I admire George's efforts to cover Helen's whole life, from girlhood to her twilight years, and absolutely adored the little breadcrumbs of hints about her true paternity throughout her youth - there was a certain thrilling aspect to knowing exactly what was coming re: the swan references while Helen herself was utterly confused. Yet the actual meeting with Zeus in swan form was oddly anticlimactic, as was her mother's confirmation that Helen is, indeed, his daughter. The setting was meticulously researched and I adored the vivid details that we get through Helen's craving to venture into the outside world. Yet once she grows up and marries, these rich details fall by the wayside - her pregnancy and early years of motherhood with Hermione are totally glossed over, and much of her marriage years are spent bemoaning her lack of libido (courtesy of Aphrodite, who harbors a grudge against Helen for accidentally forgetting her in thanking the gods for her kind husband). By the time Aphrodite bestows sexual desire upon Helen, we meet Paris, and their attraction is not the ill-fated star-crossed love that we've been expecting so much as overwhelming lust. Helen's infuriatingly shallow attraction to Paris completely ruined the story for me, and I could not sympathize with a woman who was willing to abandon her child and send a kingdom into war over good sex. That was the basis of their relationship! Despite both characters acknowledging the bizarre nature of their love and attraction - Helen muses "how can I love a man I don't know?" within hours of their first meeting - it simply did not work for me at all.
I wanted to like this book a lot. I love Helen of Troy, and Margaret George is a tremendously gifted writer who has clearly done her research on the era of Greek myths. This just, sadly, was not for me.
But nevertheless, I had such a difficult time truly connecting with the characters in this story. The Trojan war and Helen's role in the conflict is, in my mind, the most dramatic of all the Greek myths, and I went into this expecting a character study of a vibrant, passionate young woman whose only crime was being the daughter of a god. Yet Helen never truly came to life in any of the formats I came across - if anything, she was almost frustratingly passive at times. Even during the tournament of suitors, in which she insisted on choosing her husband and challenging Melelaus to an impossible physical feat in exchange for her heart, Helen seemed to just "roll" with things rather than taking charge. Despite her complicated relationship with the gods - namely her father, Zeus, and goddess half-sister, Aphrodite - and their tendency to treat mortals like toys, Helen seems pretty content to sit back and let them do as they like with her life. I understand a certain amount of piety and subservience to the gods, given the culture and time period, but I could never quite reconcile Helen's simultaneous frustration with these higher powers with her insatiable curiosity about her divine heritage. Perhaps this is a very human attitude to hold, but it didn't quite translate on paper as a complex characterization so much as a bafflingly vague one.
I admire George's efforts to cover Helen's whole life, from girlhood to her twilight years, and absolutely adored the little breadcrumbs of hints about her true paternity throughout her youth - there was a certain thrilling aspect to knowing exactly what was coming re: the swan references while Helen herself was utterly confused. Yet the actual meeting with Zeus in swan form was oddly anticlimactic, as was her mother's confirmation that Helen is, indeed, his daughter. The setting was meticulously researched and I adored the vivid details that we get through Helen's craving to venture into the outside world. Yet once she grows up and marries, these rich details fall by the wayside - her pregnancy and early years of motherhood with Hermione are totally glossed over, and much of her marriage years are spent bemoaning her lack of libido (courtesy of Aphrodite, who harbors a grudge against Helen for accidentally forgetting her in thanking the gods for her kind husband). By the time Aphrodite bestows sexual desire upon Helen, we meet Paris, and their attraction is not the ill-fated star-crossed love that we've been expecting so much as overwhelming lust. Helen's infuriatingly shallow attraction to Paris completely ruined the story for me, and I could not sympathize with a woman who was willing to abandon her child and send a kingdom into war over good sex. That was the basis of their relationship! Despite both characters acknowledging the bizarre nature of their love and attraction - Helen muses "how can I love a man I don't know?" within hours of their first meeting - it simply did not work for me at all.
I wanted to like this book a lot. I love Helen of Troy, and Margaret George is a tremendously gifted writer who has clearly done her research on the era of Greek myths. This just, sadly, was not for me.
My first introduction to the story of Helen of Troy was a movie by that name starring Rosanna Podesta. It came out when I was a child, sometime in the '50s and it wound up on the bill at the Princess Theater on a Saturday matinee.
I used to love to go to the Princess Theater on Saturday afternoons to sit in the dark and drift away into another time and place. The Princess was my time machine and, in it, I made the trip to ancient Sparta and Troy.
That was an epic movie in the era of epic movies like "The Ten Commandments" and "Ulysses." ("Ulysses" is another that I remember well.) They were wonderful adventures for a young, imaginative girl who had otherwise not been exposed to classical literature. The epics introduced me to classical literature and the cartoons introduced me to classical music. Yes, that truly was another era.
I thought of all that as I picked up this book to read, on the recommendation of my daughter. I had just reread "The Iliad" a couple of years ago and, of course, I saw the movie "Troy" with the wonderful Eric Bana as Hector, so this ancient tragedy was still fairly fresh on my mind.
When I first started reading the book, I found it beautifully written and I thought I was really going to enjoy it. It was wonderful to see this story that is so well-known told from a different perspective. A female perspective. It is the viewpoint that is usually overlooked or denigrated in the telling of war tales, and yet in these ancient wars (and in modern ones) women often suffered the most horrendous fates of all, paying the price for the hubristic ego-trips of the men.
As I got further into this book, though, I found my sympathy for Helen and for Paris waning. Paris seemed more and more like a petulant boy and Helen seemed like a thoroughly selfish woman, throwing away a husband who was kind to her, her parents and siblings who loved her, and worst of all, her daughter, all for the promise of sexual ecstasy. She had her ecstasy, at least briefly, but she lost everything else, and because Agamemnon was able to use her betrayal as an excuse to attack Troy, thousands died and a great city was destroyed. Was it worth it?
Of course, the excuse throughout George's book as well as in Homer's telling of the tale is that the gods made them do it. The immature and petty Greek gods were an extraordinarily bloodthirsty lot. But then most gods are.
In the end, I did enjoy this book and found it an interesting, if perhaps overlong, retelling of the well-known tale. George is a good writer and had obviously done some significant research to write the story in a fresh way. I think I will be looking for her other books retelling ancient stories from female perspectives. Truly, though, it is hard to improve on or compete with Homer.
I used to love to go to the Princess Theater on Saturday afternoons to sit in the dark and drift away into another time and place. The Princess was my time machine and, in it, I made the trip to ancient Sparta and Troy.
That was an epic movie in the era of epic movies like "The Ten Commandments" and "Ulysses." ("Ulysses" is another that I remember well.) They were wonderful adventures for a young, imaginative girl who had otherwise not been exposed to classical literature. The epics introduced me to classical literature and the cartoons introduced me to classical music. Yes, that truly was another era.
I thought of all that as I picked up this book to read, on the recommendation of my daughter. I had just reread "The Iliad" a couple of years ago and, of course, I saw the movie "Troy" with the wonderful Eric Bana as Hector, so this ancient tragedy was still fairly fresh on my mind.
When I first started reading the book, I found it beautifully written and I thought I was really going to enjoy it. It was wonderful to see this story that is so well-known told from a different perspective. A female perspective. It is the viewpoint that is usually overlooked or denigrated in the telling of war tales, and yet in these ancient wars (and in modern ones) women often suffered the most horrendous fates of all, paying the price for the hubristic ego-trips of the men.
As I got further into this book, though, I found my sympathy for Helen and for Paris waning. Paris seemed more and more like a petulant boy and Helen seemed like a thoroughly selfish woman, throwing away a husband who was kind to her, her parents and siblings who loved her, and worst of all, her daughter, all for the promise of sexual ecstasy. She had her ecstasy, at least briefly, but she lost everything else, and because Agamemnon was able to use her betrayal as an excuse to attack Troy, thousands died and a great city was destroyed. Was it worth it?
Of course, the excuse throughout George's book as well as in Homer's telling of the tale is that the gods made them do it. The immature and petty Greek gods were an extraordinarily bloodthirsty lot. But then most gods are.
In the end, I did enjoy this book and found it an interesting, if perhaps overlong, retelling of the well-known tale. George is a good writer and had obviously done some significant research to write the story in a fresh way. I think I will be looking for her other books retelling ancient stories from female perspectives. Truly, though, it is hard to improve on or compete with Homer.
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
While beautifully written like all of Margaret George's pseudo-memoirs, the book is in no way surprising when it comes to the character of Helen of Troy. If you're familiar with the original myth and the Iliad this book really holds almost no surprises for you. However, it is still an enjoyable, immersive read managing to creating an intelligent character of Helen and leaving the question of half-godhood questioned and unanswered.
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. My book club chose it and, honestly, I was dreading it. But I was sucked in pretty quickly and couldn’t stop until I knew how it finished. The ending, though, was a bit of a let down. That’s the only reason this didn’t get all 5 stars.