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A review by elerireads
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
4.0
Argh my poor, poor heart!
Finding it quite difficult to put my thoughts on this book into words - have just been staring blankly at my screen for twenty minutes now. Firstly, I guess the purist in me feels a bit guilty for reading this without having read The Iliad first, or even really knowing anything about it, but that kind of attitude is probably just a recipe for reading neither (Margaret Atwood's Hag-seed has just been sitting on my shelf for yonks bc I haven't read/seen The Tempest)! Anyway, reading The Iliad first wasn't really an option, given that I was reading this for a bookclub meeting tomorrow, hence binge-reading it in a day...
All that rambling is basically preamble to say that I felt like this really captured the feel of a Greek epic, despite me not being qualified to comment on that really. You felt it in the writing style, although I can't describe how for the life of me. There was all the inescapable destiny and honour and heroism and narcissistic gods and brutal war, but here the whole tale is framed as an epic love story between Achilles and Patroclus, and it was So. Good. Nothing is sugar-coated, and they're both aware of and honestly discuss each other's flaws, which was so refreshing. Objectively it maybe seems like their love doesn't make tons of sense, especially at the beginning when there isn't much explanation of what Achilles actually saw in Patroclus ('surprising' isn't exactly a ringing endorsement), but Miller renders this almost irrelevant by making us fall in love with both of them ourselves? The tragic ending doesn't hurt any less because we knew it was coming, but then it still manages to finish on a hopeful note.
Finding it quite difficult to put my thoughts on this book into words - have just been staring blankly at my screen for twenty minutes now. Firstly, I guess the purist in me feels a bit guilty for reading this without having read The Iliad first, or even really knowing anything about it, but that kind of attitude is probably just a recipe for reading neither (Margaret Atwood's Hag-seed has just been sitting on my shelf for yonks bc I haven't read/seen The Tempest)! Anyway, reading The Iliad first wasn't really an option, given that I was reading this for a bookclub meeting tomorrow, hence binge-reading it in a day...
All that rambling is basically preamble to say that I felt like this really captured the feel of a Greek epic, despite me not being qualified to comment on that really. You felt it in the writing style, although I can't describe how for the life of me. There was all the inescapable destiny and honour and heroism and narcissistic gods and brutal war, but here the whole tale is framed as an epic love story between Achilles and Patroclus, and it was So. Good. Nothing is sugar-coated, and they're both aware of and honestly discuss each other's flaws, which was so refreshing. Objectively it maybe seems like their love doesn't make tons of sense, especially at the beginning when there isn't much explanation of what Achilles actually saw in Patroclus ('surprising' isn't exactly a ringing endorsement), but Miller renders this almost irrelevant by making us fall in love with both of them ourselves? The tragic ending doesn't hurt any less because we knew it was coming, but then it still manages to finish on a hopeful note.