The Song of Achilles
by Madeline Miller
I loved the richness of the language, the descriptions. She really made me feel I was in ancient Greece — the smells, the whole environment.
Recommendations from our site
“This is by Madeline Miller who is an American academic. It was her debut novel and it won the Orange Prize. For some reason I came across it when it first came out, before anyone else knew about it, and I absolutely loved it. I really appreciated the deft, spare beauty of the writing and I like the way it came at the story from Patroclus’s point of view. I loved the richness of the language, the descriptions. She really made me feel I was in ancient Greece — the smells, the whole environment.” Read more...
Lucy Coats, Children's Author
“It is a novelisation of that, told in the first person by Patroclus – which among other things is difficult technically, because Patroclus dies in book 16 but the story goes beyond that. So at a certain point you’re wondering, as a reader, how this guy is talking. Another problem is that the book unbelievably trivialises the spirit of the original. I’ll never forget when, as an undergraduate, a professor whom I greatly admired told me after something silly I had said that “the classics is serious business”. I don’t want to know what Achilles did in bed, frankly. If you want to play with the big boys, fine, but don’t turn The Iliad into a Twilight novel.” Read more...
Daniel Mendelsohn on Updating the Classics (of Greek and Roman Literature)
Daniel Mendelsohn, Memoirist
