Son of achilles book gay
My Writing on Medium
A retelling of the love story of Achilles and Patroclus. The Song of Achilles follows the story from Patroclus’ point of view, from boyhood, charting his friendship and eventual connection with Achilles, all the way until their tragic end in the Trojan War. (And I’m not going to apologise for spoilers. That would be silly.) Not a recent publication, but I loved it a lot, so I’m going to stick a review here.
It’s taken me a little while to process this one. Not because I had problems with it, but because the emotions are so huge, they took a little longer to digest than normal sized non-mythic emotions. It is a joy as a story, and also caused me to reflect on the use of monumental emotions in storytelling, and the role tragic stories play in modern literature. As a love story, it is beautiful and well studied, and those epic emotions are heartbreaking at times. I admire the larger than existence quality of it—Miller really captures the mythic innateness of the originals, while making it all much more personal and focused. The writing style is simple but lyrical.
There a
Retrospect
Journal.
Content Warning: This article discusses instances of enslavement, homophobia and rape.
Madeline Miller&#;s first book, The Song of Achilles, was originally published in September The book is a retelling of the story of Achilles from the perspective of Patroclus, an exiled ex-prince, from the pair’s first meeting to Patroclus&#; death (the last few chapters are told from the perspective of his ghost). At the heart of the story lies the explicitly (in the novel, at least) affectionate relationship between the two protagonists.
An instant success &#; it won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for many other prizes, as good as becoming a New York Times bestseller. It has a devoted fan monitoring and has been the gateway to an interest in the Classics for many. At the time of its free, it was praised for its narrative choices, design, and use of scholarship (Miller has a background in Classics). As
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Rating: No Good Genre: Fantasy Representation: Gay men, Greek/Mediterranean cast Trigger Warnings: rape, rape culture, explicit sex scenes, child sexualization, exotified ethnicity, personality death
I stopped reading The Song of Achilles a third of the way through. I started the novel with high hopes, as The Song of Achilles promised to be an exploration of the passionate relationship between Achilles and Patroclus—taking what The Iliad only implied and putting it to paper.
Here's what I was hoping for: an honest exploration of the ancient Greek conception of sexuality, taking into account that homoeroticism that we today would call “homosexual” was not considered part of one's sexual identity, simply what one did (in addition to taking a wife, of course). What would a boy growing up in (mythical) ancient Greece, a land where even Zeus took male lovers, think about his own affectionate and sexual desires? Does he need only men (in The Song of Achilles this is accurate of both Achilles and Patroclus), and what does
Book review — The Song of Achilles
This is a book about exactly what the title says. Singing the song of Achilles. From the point of view of his companion/boyfriend Patroclus.
First of all: spoiler alert. By which I mean I will not care for spoilers in this book. This story is thousands of years old, after all.
So, I’m sorry to say that Patroclus dies, and Achilles dies too. The Greeks are celebrated for their tragedies after all.
The first question (the one I asked myself when picking up this book after reading about it for months on tumblr) is then: what’s the point? We already know the story, isn’t that the whole purpose of reading a book?
Well, yes and no. It’s a tough question to answer, but I’ll try my best. If you have any interest in Greek mythology (like I do) or have just lived long enough to see at least one of the bajillion adaptations of the Trojan war that Hollywood has produced, you’ll be familiar with the story at least enough to recognize it.
But this book. This book, man. It outdoes all of those.
At the end of