Reviews

Songs on Bronze by Nigel Spivey

piquareste's review

loved this — so easy and fun to read; so nice to hear the broad strokes of all the most iconic stories, even if it's not encyclopedic. i think i surprised myself by enjoying the tragedies at the end the most — loved the author's voice coming in stronger and more brooding there.

Doom is a weight. Doom obeys its gravity. (The House of Atreus, p. 224)

What if, what if? . . . There goes tragedy's refrain. (The House of Atreus, p. 226)

And so it goes, the tragic mode. Imagine death. Create wreckage and waste, play havoc. Appear to break taboo and rules. Pretend total loss; cavort in a pantomime of misery. Does that feel good—to try it out, inside the threshing circle, everything going awry? Of course it does. We watch what we abominate. We are not killed. We pity and we cry. (Oedipus, p. 233)