The Song of Achilles

✍ Scribed by Madeline Miller

• Publisher: A&C Black;Ecco
• Year: 2011;2012
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 189 KB
• Edition: 1st ed
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1408821982

✦ Synopsis

The god touches his finger to the arrow's fletching. Then he breathes, a puff
of air as if to send dandelions flying, to push toy boats over water. And
the arrow flies, straight and silent, in a curving, downward arc towards
Achilles' back.

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been
exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their
differences, the boys develop a tender friendship, a bond which blossoms into
something deeper as they grow into young men.

But when Helen of Sparta is kidnapped, Achilles is dispatched to distant Troy
to fulfil his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus
follows, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they
hold dear.

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Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2012 : Betrayal, ardor, war, and
prophecies--in The Song of Achilles , author Madeline Miller brings together
everything I love about The Iliad without the labor of epic poetry. In this
new twist on the Trojan War story, Patroclus and Achilles are the
quintessential mismatched pair--a mortal underdog exiled in shame and a
glorious demigod revered by all--but what would a novel of ancient Greece be
without star-crossed love? Miller includes other good tragic bits--
foreknowledge of death, ruthless choices that pit pride and reputation against
the lives of innocents, the folly of men and gods--and through her beautiful
writing my spine chilled in the presence of Achilles mother, the sea goddess
Thetis, and I became a bystander in the battlefield of Troy awash with blood,
exaltation, and despair. The Song of Achilles infuses the essence of Homer
with modern storytelling in a combination that is utterly absorbing and
gratifying--I cant wait to see what Miller tackles next. --Seira Wilson

Gregory Maguire Interviews Madeline Miller

Gregory Maguire is the best-selling author of Confessions of an Ugly
Stepsister , Lost, Mirror Mirror, the Wicked Years, a series that
includes Wicked , Son of a Witch , A Lion Among Men , and most recently,
Out of Oz.

Gregory Maguire: Ms. Miller, you write with the confidence of the
zealously inspired, taking as your material one of the great foundation texts
of world literature. In three millennia, The Iliad has garnered somewhat
wider attention than The Wizard of Oz , with which I have played, so I have
to ask: where do you get the noive? How did you come to dare to take on such a
daunting task, and for your first book?

Madeline Miller: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and in my case
it was just dangerous enough to get me started. If I had stopped to ponder, I
think I might have been too intimidated. But it helped that Patroclus is such
an underdoggiving him voice felt like standing up for him. I had been
intensely frustrated by a number of articles that kept side-stepping the love
between him and Achilles, which to me felt so obviously at the storys heart.
So I wanted to set the record straight, as I saw it.

Maguire: The novel tells the story of the rise, fall and immortalization
of the golden Achilles. You approach his famous story from a sideline, that of
Patroclus, his bosom companion and lover. Was it hard to keep the mighty arc
of legend from overwhelming shadowy Patroclus, and did you write more of him
than you ended up using, just to be sure you had him firmly grounded in your
mind?

Miller: Definitely yes to the second. I actually spent five years writing
a first draft of the novel, took a good long look at it, then threw it out and
started from scratch. Even though not a word survived, that draft was an
essential first step. It helped me understand the story and characters,
especially Patroclus, from the inside out.

As for the overwhelming legends, I actually think they worked in my
favorbecause Patroclus is overwhelmed by them himself. He is this ordinary
person who is pulled into a terrifying world of angry deities and destiny
because of his love for Achilles.

Maguire: Having glancingly heard of this legend before, I knew more or
less how it would end. I had no idea how you might handle the loss of
perspective and point of view when tragedy would inevitably strike. You
managed to narrate an almost impossible transition from life into myth in
part, I think, by your instinctual use of a combination of present and past
tense, to say nothing of a masterly combining of authorial and first person
observations. How many slaughtered bulls did you sacrifice, and on whose
altar, to deserve the talent to risk such dangerous technique?

Miller: It was a lot of bulls. And whatever ended up working, I give all
the credit to my background in theater. When I first started writing, I had
this idea that I should be in control of the story, forcing it forward. It
never worked. What I needed to do was learn how to get in character, and write
from there.

It took me a long time to find just the right tone for the endingI kept
writing and throwing away, writing and throwing away. Then, in the middle of
apartment-hunting, inspiration struck. All the other ideas had started out
well, but would gum up before they got anywhere near the finish line. But this
one kept humming right along. And it was the simplest, so there you go.

Maguire: Oscar Wilde said something like, The Odyssey was written by
Homer, or another Greek of the same name. But Oscar Wilde had clearly not met
you. This is not a question. It is a salute.

Review

I loved it. (J.K. Rowling)

Fast, true and incredibly rewardingA remarkable achievement. (USA Today)

Wildly romantic [and] surprisingly suspenseful....[B]ringing those dark
figures back to life, making them men again, and while shes at it, us[ing]
her passionate companion piece to The Iliad as a subtle swipe at todays
ongoing debate over gay marriage. Talk about updating the classics. (Time
magazine)

One of the best novelistic adaptations of Homer in recent memory, and it
offers strikingly well-rounded and compassionate portrait of
Achilles....[Miller] injects a newfound sense of suspense into a story with an
ending that has already been determined. (Wall Street Journal)

Powerful, inventive, passionate, and beautifully written. (Boston Globe)

Beautifully done. . ..In prose as clean and spare as the driving poetry of
Homer, Miller captures the intensity and devotion of adolescent friendship and
lets us believe in these long-dead boys...deepening and enriching a tale that
has been told for 3,000 years. (Washington Post)

One of 2012s most exciting debuts...seductive, hugely
entertaining....[I]magining the intimate friendship between Achilles and the
devoted Patroclus...Miller conjures...soulmates. The resulting novel is
cinematicone might say epicin scope, but refreshingly, compellingly human in
detail. (Vogue)

You dont need to be familiar with Homers The Iliad (or Brad Pitts Troy,
for that matter) to find Madeline Millers The Song of Achilles
spellbinding....her explorations of ego, grief, and loves many permutations
are both familiar and new....[A] timeless love story. (O magazine)

Madeline Millers brilliant first novel...is a story of great, passionate
love between Achilles and Patroclus....[R]ewriting the Western worlds first
and greatest war novel is an awesome task to undertake. That she did it with
such grace, style and suspense is astonishing. (Dallas Morning News)

The Song of Achilles...should be read and enjoyed for itself, but if Madeline
Millers novel sends the reader back to Homer and his successors, she is to be
thanked for that as well. (Washington Independent Review of Books)