Booktalk

    I am no expert, but I have been infatuated with the intricate, innocently frank first-stories of Greek myths; reading several versions of the Iliad and Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (including Ted Hughes' elegant retellings), and recently, Madeline Miller’s inspired, Circe.

    Nearly every page of Miller’s book reminded me of my first reading of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; where each sentence, impossibly, managed to be a work of art as priceless as the story. How could someone frame so many insightful, original, beautiful sentences?

    Which has led me to Miller’s earlier book, The Song of Achilles. It is the love story of Achilles and Patroclus; all the more poignant for knowing the vortex of the story from Edith Hamilton-days in high school. I have picked it up and set it aside several times in my reading because, I think, she has made such a moving human story from such an overshadowing epic; and so I fear for both of them, hope for both of them. There is a fragility to my page-to-page expectation.

    I have not finished it yet, In a way, I don’t have to. I know the outcome. But Madeline Miler has taken me inside the story where all the hurts and foibles of the characters create something new for me to inhabit. It is not an ancient world. It is as expectant and beautiful, and as terrible and temporal as our own. And so it sings.