The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I bought The Song of Achilles a couple of months back and have been debating ever since whether I read it first or go back and revisit some of my Mary Renault books before I read it, given that The Song of Achilles is in the grand tradition of Renault’s historical novels about ancient Greece.

In the end I decided to read The Song of Achilles first before my reread for a couple of reasons. One – it’s been a good 25 years since I read any Renault and I was kind of worried that they wouldn’t be as good as I remember, which would ruin a great memory for me, and two, if that happened it would likely put me off the genre before I read The Song of Achilles. Additionally if the Renault books were as good as I remember, it would mean The Song of Achilles would have to be extra special to stand up to them. People may accuse me of overthinking these things, and they’d probably be right.

Anyway, I decided to read The Song of Achilles first, and let it stand or fall on its own merits and I was delighted that it more than held its own. I can honestly say that it’s probably the best thing I’ve read in a long time from the perspective of holding my attention, pulling me along, making me root for the characters and keeping my heart in my mouth, even though I know how the story ends (spoiler alert – there’s a little thing called the Siege of Troy).

The heart of the book is the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, who also narrates the book and I take my hat off to Madeline Miller for writing such a beautifully realised relationship, both as friends and as lovers. Patroclus is a prince who is exiled from his homeland after accidently killing the son of a nobleman. He loses his status and becomes just another boy in the household of King Peleus of Phythia. Achilles is the golden son of Peleus, and seemingly a world apart from awkward, outcast Patroclus. But gradually, the pair become friends, much to the horror of Achilles’ goddess mother Thetis.

One of the things I really liked about the novel and the author’s approach is that long before the mythic deeds at Troy, we get to know Achilles not as a hero, but as a growing boy and young man as seen through the eyes of Patroclus. Making Achilles both tangible and human despite his heritage makes the relationship and the events to come even more poignant and tragic. When Achilles says to Patroclus “Name me one hero who was happy,” you can almost feel the weight of the gods bearing down on them, and when he continues “I’m going to be the first,” my heart aches for them.

Although the relationship between these two is the core of the book, Madeline Miller also writes all the other characters with great vigour. Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus, Briseis all glow with life, and I especially loved Chiron, the wise centaur who tutors both Achilles and Patroclus.

Inevitably the climax of the book is the Siege of Troy, ostensibly so Menelaus can regain his wife Helen, who’s been stolen by Paris, one of King Priam’s sons (in case anyone doesn’t know this...) But as seen through the eyes of Patroclus, who is not a warrior, the siege is also about conquest, about destruction and enslavement of common people – of the taking of women as spoils of war with all the associated implication  –  while kings and princes talk about honour. And it is honour and hubris that is Achilles downfall and although I thought I knew the story, I couldn’t turn the pages quick enough as the tragedy unfolds. (I should say that Madeline Miller uses Homer’s version of the story, so there’s no nonsense about Achilles’ heel, which only appears in later versions of the story.)

I was going to say that with the exception of Briseis, women don’t come off particularly well. Deidameia, mother of Achilles’ son Pyrrhus, is imperious and calculating, until Thetis takes a hand in the game. Thetis herself is also mostly cold, demanding and manipulative. We don’t see much of the other goddesses, but Paris is beloved of Aphrodite, which could say a lot about both of them. This is not a criticism of the author – unless she was going to do a complete Marian Zimmer Bradley type revisionist version of Homer, these are the personas of the women in these tales, so we acknowledge that the Illiad was written by a man (or men) and move on. Having said all that, most of the men don’t come off that well either – Agamemnon is arrogance personified, Odysseus plays with words to manipulate people to his own ends. Pyrrhus, who only appears at the end as a young boy is already cruel. These are the way the characters appear in the myths and they are reflected in character in this book.

The Song of Achilles is about a lot of things. It’s about free will, about the machinations of capricious deities meddling in the affairs of humans and demanding penitence and sacrifice when they feel offended. It’s about the weakness of fathers and the desperation of mothers (even goddesses) to protect sons. It’s about the place of women in a world of men, and about finding father figures in unlikely places. And most of all it’s about how the depth of a relationship binds two men together in love and grief, friendship and tragedy. Now, that is a lot to say about one book, but I adored it, and I’ll look forward to reading Madeline Miller’s new novel, Circe. I don’t have it yet, but on the strength of The Song of Achilles, I think it’s just moved up the ladder on my wish list.