A review by emjay24
Helen of Troy by Margaret George

Did not finish book.

2.0

Margaret George is a great writer, and i was interested to read her historical fiction treatment of the Helen of Troy story. Other people were too, apparently, as i was stopped at least three times on the subway/bus and asked about it. I never learned the story in school, but i've picked up enough about it from popular culture and retellings that i know what happened. This kind of tries to be historical fiction, but the gods are still there as characters that do things in the story, maybe not as full people, but they get talked to and those gods actually influence things, so it's more like a mythology still. That's fine, that's interesting. But this book just DRAGGED. I got to page 368 and the war was just starting. There are 600 pages. I am not one to shirk away from a large book - i was also reading a 1000 page book at the time, which i finished and enjoyed - but it has to make some progress. I did not really like the main character, Helen, i didn't really like anyone, and things took sooo long to happen. The best part is the first part of the book, when she's younger, but then it just gets slower and slower. I assume that it will pick up with the war, but when i realized i was just dreading reading this thing because it was putting me asleep, i gave up. I felt badly, since all these people seem to love or want to love the book, but I couldn't. If you like things with very long builds and a lot of wordiness words, try this story. Otherwise, try one of her other books instead.