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Sometimes you realise you're just not a fan of the Iliad. It's not everyone's kind of story - I love the beginning but then get immediately bored when all the manslaughter begins. The story of Troy is endlessly violent, concerned in its entirety with names and legacies. It's difficult to empathise with all these murder-suicidal maniacs, preoccupied entirely with honour and brutal conquest, hard to discern their motivations - they feel quite alien, distant. At the same time, there is psychological realism to the Iliad, some very understandable emotional core. Hector and Achilles shine bright as real men, imperfect and driven, but the road they take is incomprehensible to my bourgeois sensibilities.
And then there are women, subjected endlessly to kidnappings and enslavement, never having a say in their fate, and the best thing we have is a quiet hope that maybe, just maybe, they find brief peace in company of their captors.
The story is a tough beast to conquer, but Fry makes it easy. There are many moments of brilliance, the haunting sad chapters that catch you off guard. There are characters whom you get to know and mourn, and the heavy atmosphere that never lets you forget this is a tragedy.
If you want to read the Iliad but want to avoid that one chapter that's just a list of names and ships, this is as good of an alternative as there could ever be.
And then there are women, subjected endlessly to kidnappings and enslavement, never having a say in their fate, and the best thing we have is a quiet hope that maybe, just maybe, they find brief peace in company of their captors.
The story is a tough beast to conquer, but Fry makes it easy. There are many moments of brilliance, the haunting sad chapters that catch you off guard. There are characters whom you get to know and mourn, and the heavy atmosphere that never lets you forget this is a tragedy.
If you want to read the Iliad but want to avoid that one chapter that's just a list of names and ships, this is as good of an alternative as there could ever be.