My Review of The Song of Achilles #TuesdayBookBlog #AmReading #BookAddict
The Song of Achilles was o
ur April book club read. Although I like Greek mythology, I was hesitant to read this one. I can never remember all the different myths and boy are there a lot of Greek Gods. Who can keep them all apart? Add in the demi-gods and the characters from the Odyssey and you have a recipe for confusion – at least in my humble opinion.
Not only did I thoroughly enjoy The Song of Achilles, but I also found myself flipping through pages much faster than expected. Miller’s writing has a simplistic quality to it, which pulled me into the story and made reading a delight. She also has a way of sneaking in facts about the myths, which us mere mortals tend to forget, without sounding like she’s the teacher we know she is.
In The Song of Achilles, Miller has made Patroclus, a minor character of Greek mythology, into the storyteller. Instead of a story about the great Achilles and his fighting prowess, we get a love story. A story about a man who will follow his love anywhere, including war.
Our book club struggled with Miller’s description of the Trojan War. Although the war lasted ten years and there was incredible suffering, including rape, pillaging, and death, the suffering was glossed over in the novel. Personally, I wasn’t as bothered by this as the others. Miller did not write a story about war. She wrote a love story. And, as a love story, it was beautiful. I did struggle to understand what in the world Patroclus saw in the self-obsessed demi-god Achilles. But that’s how love is. It doesn’t see the imperfections.
Another issue our book club had was the lack of women in the story. Any women in the story are minor characters. They are obviously unimportant except for use as a sacrifice or war prize. My female-only book club didn’t like this one bit. I get where they’re coming from. I do. Really. But I’m fairly certain that most men in those times thought of women in the same way. It’s unfortunate, but this is a story told from a man’s point of view.
I recommend this novel to anyone having even the slightest of interests in Greek mythology.
I get the “men in those days thought like that / society was all-guy back then” argument, but I don’t buy it. The writer chose what she was gonna write, and she wrote this. And then she sought to have it published. And then the publishers thought it was a good idea and produced it. I don’t think it’s cool to justify all those decisions with plain “men at that time just were like this!”
Then again, it does make me wonder. Would the world have been just a little bit poorer without this book?
I don’t think we should change history based on today’s views. And not every book has to make a statement or be realistic. The book is about a myth – something that by definition is not realistic. There are other books that tell the story from a woman’s viewpoint, but that’s not what this book set out to do.
I totally agree. But the way we tell that history matters, too. Actually, now that I think about it… we can’t NOT avoid changing history based on today’s views, can we? History isn’t a bedrock, after all, it’s soft like clay, and every historiography – whether fictional or less so – bumps that clay a little, shaping it anew.
Also, yes, I’d like to believe that not every book has to make a statement. I’d like it if books were sometimes just for the fun of it, or something. But I can no longer escape the fact that every goddam book DOES make a statement, whether it wants to or not.
Also also, I’m completely with you on the realism issue. Too many myth retellings attempted to bring “gritty realism” back into the myth, and I think that stinks… Though I hope we’re past that phase already.
RE: Statements in books.
I write funny, fun books but often find that I’m making a statement without realizing it until I’m at the very end.
Ain’t that so? 😀 I guess we can’t avoid it, because writing demands a hell of a lot of pruning the topic to stay coherent. That’s why even the most bubblegum of books are still pro-something – whether it’s just “this guy made it in the end!” or “there’s a hot prince out there waiting for ya!”