65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb, Sensational, Sublime -- A Golden Balance, January 16, 2010
No holds barred, Annabel Lyon's triumphant "The Golden Mean" is an intelligent, savvy -- yet unflinching and parsimonious -- glimpse into the life and times of Aristotle (384 BC -322 BC). This book has to be the historical fiction coup of 2009. (Please read the media and other reviews above.) As a reader of Lyon's little masterpiece, you will be, as I was, struck by the grace and humor of her prose. The dialogue is stupendous. Aristotle becomes real, flawed and brilliant - an awesome human being.
Yes, Alexander (The Great), Aristotle's stellar, somewhat fawning, somewhat arrogant pupil, plays a prominent (though secondary) role in this well-researched story, which brings Aristotle, the father of Western science and philosophy to vivid characterization. Lyon's account of Alexander comports with other fictionalized portrayals of the greatest general of all times - here as a boy and youth. The resulting view of Alexander is indeed a "golden mean" achievement by Lyon.
The prose enfolds you into the book as you read. It is not a simple matter of being unable to put the book down; you actually feel a desire for the story. The characters live in your world.
The book, as one reviewer said, is "full of intellect, profound," and, as another states, "fully convincing." Well, no novel has to be "convincingly" accurate to the facts, and this one takes literary license frequently, through its lovely dialogue.
Page 188, (Aristotle speaking to Alexander) "...You must look for the mean between extremes, the point of balance. The point will differ from man to man. There is not a universal standard of virtue to cover all situations at all times. Context must be taken into account, specificity, what is best at a particular place and time...."
Page 264, "...Go still at sundown, and you can hear the earth itself humming. The ground stays warm long into the night....."
Page 276, "...while my student (Alexander), charging off the end of every map, falls deeper and deeper into the well of himself..."
I see only one flaw. Lyon falls into the same trap that most writers of historical fiction do. The story paints a somewhat unreal picture of life in 300's BC. The characters for the most part (as they truly were) are wealthy, educated, and healthy - living a life of some ease and luxury with slaves, servants and a general absence of misery. There is little pain (except the natural and the self-inflicted), whereas ordinary life back then was pretty much awful and miserable. Of course, Aristotle, his cohorts, family and friends for the most part were privileged, often at the expense of others less fortunate. However, his (and others') arrogance and vast ignorance and prejudices (attitudes toward women, for instance) are obvious and present on many pages. His second wife, Herpyllis, has to teach him virtually everything about satisfying sex.
The cover photograph is puzzling. Why this photo? Who is it? What is it supposed to evoke? It's a strange and bad choice.
In her correct drive to the goal of brevity, at times the story line dangles unfinished or sketchy, as we jump too quickly to another scenario. The most vivid example was a lack of details about the swimming party at the beach with Alexander, Aristotle and Alexander's older brother Arrhidaeus. I usually criticize a book for its being too long. This one is too short !!
One really, really great thing in the front of the book is the Cast (in order of appearance). Thank you, Annabel Lyon and your publisher. I so wish that other novelists and publishers would follow your splendid example!!
All in all, it's a 5++ on Amazon's rating scale.
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Education, June 3, 2010
In 343 BCE, King Philip II of Macedon engaged the philosopher Aristotle as tutor for his 13-year-old son Alexander. Philip, who was well on his way to taking control of the entire Greek peninsula, and had his eyes on the Persian Empire, had already taken care to have Alexander schooled in the arts of war. But wishing to temper the warrior passions with the influence of philosophy and the arts, he turned to the celebrated philosopher, a former playmate from his own boyhood. The three or four years that Aristotle spent with the young man is thus both a treatise on education and the story of the formation of Alexander the Great.
Mary Renault told this story from Alexander's point of view in her 1969 novel
FIRE FROM HEAVEN. By looking at the relationship through Aristotle's eyes, Annabel Lyon downplays romantic and swashbuckling elements in favor of philosophy and psychology. Aristotle himself comes over as a fascinating character, interested not only in ideas but in every aspect of the world around him, studying the organs of his wife Pythias to better understand the physiology of desire, or dissecting the body of a warrior on the battlefield of Chaeronea to discover how the various parts connect. His appetite for knowledge is so modern in its empiricism that his occasional reversions to received opinion come as a shock. He greatly loves Pythias, for example, but it is only after her death that he has cause to question the old teaching that sexual pleasure is not accessible to women.
Alexander, by contrast, is drawn less in the accumulation of detail than in the gaps between his flashes of brilliance or bursts of petulance. Aristotle refuses to pander, but instead challenges the boy and earns his respect, building a relationship that also becomes one of mutual love. [Not a physical relationship, although Lyon is ambivalent about Alexander's sexuality and makes no bones about the frequency of male homosexuality in a society that made a point of sequestering its women.] Like a painter doing as much with shadow as with light, Lyon reveals Aristotle's character almost as well in his tutoring of Alexander's mentally handicapped half-brother Arrhidaeus as in his work with the Prince himself, and draws fascinating parallels between the philosopher's recurrent bipolar disorder and the post-traumatic stress syndrome that afflicts Alexander after battle.
Lyon writes clearly, sometimes beautifully, and the book is easy to read. All the same, it seemed to wash over me without significant focus. While I can certainly appreciate the concept of the Golden Mean between extremes as an educational philosophy, I cannot easily point to key moments in the book when that concept is put to the test. I also felt that the book read more as a footnote to a history and geography already known than as a story that could stand on its own. Although I once had a classical education, I had to read with a good historical atlas open on my lap, and even then could not follow all the geographical references; the offstage events also required a greater knowledge of history than I could bring to it, even with online resources. The novel provided a fascinating insight into the Greek mind, for sure -- but I am not convinced that it approached the philosophical or moral depth that David Malouf achieved at half the length with his recent masterpiece,
RANSOM.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Was Aristotle manic depressive?, September 14, 2010
This review is from: The Golden Mean (Hardcover)
The Golden Mean is an account of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and his student Alexander of Macedon. The best part of the book is Aristotle's back story including his marriage and his possibly being mildly bipolar. His relationships pulled him out of his depression. When he tapped into the love he had for and from others he was able to get the energy to start working again. Lyon does a great job of portraying day to day life and concerns of the period. She touches on politics, contemporary philosophy, food, clothes, religion, gardening, relationships between the classes and sexes, etc. As interesting I found the book it never quite took off for me which is why I gave it four rather than five stars.
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