Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller, 2012
It may have been the unchecked hype for this novel that made it such a disappointment. Scrolling through anyone’s Booktok feed, you’ll see Song of Achilles make the list of any “saddest books of the year” video, “my all time favorites” video, “6 star books” video (I can go on). I’ve heard so much of “this book broke me!” and “I cried so hard!” These are the things I LIVE FOR, you guys, but dare I say I didn’t shed a tear—I couldn’t, considering I was zoned out for much of it.
We can owe this mostly to subjectivity – a novel I didn’t vibe with – but I do read many novels, and most emotional romance/fantasy/myth are right up my alley. The novel does have a strong start—it took me until after the first ten chapters (out of 33) to lose interest. Immediately we are in an easily visualized paradisiacal Grecian landscape, awed by talk of heroes and Gods. I quickly picked up on a switch from past to present tense, which I think has the effect of adding a nice layer of emotional depth. I enjoy the way Patroclus (our narrator) tells the story retrospectively, and at points without assertion. Miller’s style of prose is soft, clean, simple, which is probably why I didn’t DNF this one (I instead let it take me a month and a half to finish). Miller’s sentences are satisfying in their own right, so reading her work still feels as though there is something to be learned about the craft of writing, despite being zoned out of the plot.
Patroclus is a young child at the start of the novel, and well into his twenties (I believe?) at the end. Madeline’s use of vignettes, especially in the earlier chapters, is a useful way to fluidly show the passage of time. It is these earlier chapters that did catch my interest—father hosting the Olympic Games; Helen being given to a great hero; a child’s fight that ends in Patroclus’ exile; Patroclus attending Achilles lyre lesson. It is when the rising action begins, after Achilles is requested to fight in the Trojan war, that I lost my ability to envision the scenes. It is as though when the vignettes stopped, Madeline lost (or, lessened) the ability to specify the scenes. It’s as if they all became one.
(spoiler) Despite my lack of interest in the novel, I can recognize that for someone else (actually all of booktok), it could be a great novel. I wish I could say more about what happened—I do know Achilles dies, as was prophesied, and if I recall correctly, Patroclus dies also, which was not prophesied. Is this why people cried?
Here’s some quotes that are beautiful:
It is the only memory I have of my mother and so golden that I am almost sure I have made it up.
There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to hear what he had not said.
As if he heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. “Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.
I had thought to touch her, to smooth her hair in comfort. But it would not be comfort, from me.
You must not go. I almost said it, a thousand times. Instead I held his hands fast between mine; they were cold, and very still.
They lie in the dark and hate each other.
I saw the struggle on his face. Jealousy was strange to him, a foreign thing. He was hurt, but did not know how to speak of it.
“Will you tell me who hurt you?” I imagine saying you. But that is nothing more than childishness.
