Achilles returns to the tent, where my body waits. He is red and red and rust-red, up to his elbows, his knees, his neck, as if he has swum in the vast dark chambers of a heart, and emerged, just now, still dripping. [p. 325]
This is the story of Achilles and Patroclus, and of the war. Achilles the living weapon, the invincible warrior whose fate is to die at Troy: Patroclus who loves him, who is not much of a fighter, who befriends the enslaved Briseis and stands up for her, who dons Achilles' armour and dies and is not buried. And it's the story of Thetis, who does not think Patroclus good enough for her son: who is, at last, reconciled to him.
I bought this thirteen years ago and have attempted it several times since then: I think, in the first chapters, I found Patroclus too mild and Achilles too arrogant. This time around, I persevered, and the characters and story swept me along.
Miller's writing is simple, poetic, sometimes soaring. She uses, and explains, a few Greek words: therapon ('a brother-in-arms sworn to a prince by blood oaths and love'; apathes (heartless: used in the feminine form to reveal a disguise); hubris (pride). The gods here are real, and capable of turning the tide of battle or throwing a man down from a wall. Thetis in particular is monstrous, white as death with huge black eyes. At the novel's end, though, she offers what kindness she can to the spirit of the man she despised.
This is a love story as well as a study of the effects of fate and prophecy on the lives of heroes. It's poignant when Patroclus thinks 'I did not plan to live after he was gone': it's painful when Thetis tells Achilles of the prophecy that 'the best of the Myrmidons will die before two more years have passed... you will still be alive when it happens.’ Miller's descriptions of the natural world, and of the culture and society of Homeric Greece, ring true. Blood and honour, love and death, destiny and expectation.
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