Customer Reviews

Helen of Troy: A Novel

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Helen of Troy" is the latest offering of the amazing historical novelist Margaret George. She writes very long books encompassing the whole life of a real person, bumps and all. Her work on Henry VIII is the ultimate for Tudor fans, her novel on Cleopatra was beyond compare and now we have this-a very good book, but not her best work.

Unlike her past novels "Helen of Troy" feels more like a story and less like a total life history of the narrator. Not that this is bad, but even though some scenes are included this book has very little of Helen's early life or later life, focusing mainly on the war of Troy. Some of the mythological info on Helen's early life, such as her abduction by Theseus, is even left out of this novel, which acts to give it a more normal feel and make Helen an unusual, but not extraordinary woman of her time. Thus it is more of a story novel, and a bit unlike her past works.

When I read earlier this year "The Memoirs of Helen of Troy" by Amanda Elyot I said that Helen was a poor choice of narrator for her own life story. Ms. George proved me wrong in this. While Ms. Elyot's Helen was conceited and selfish, Helen in Ms. George's book is a normal woman of the time-and for all that she's beautiful, she may not be the most beautiful woman in the world. There is even doubt in this novel as to Zeus being her real father. Thus as a narrator, Helen does a great job of bringing the tragedy and beauty of Troy to life. She's a real person that it's pretty easy to identify with.

I also liked how Ms. George handled the Greek gods in this book. They were real, but elusive, changeable and not understandable by humans. They could be terribly mean and see it as kindness and acting to placate them was a large part of daily life. Ms. George strikes a good balance between fantasy and religion in her handling of them.

I would give this book a solid four stars. Not five because unlike her earlier works (such as her novel on Cleopatra) this novel is not mesmerizing-it does not sieze your attention in and hold in it place. Still though, it is a good novel and by far the best retelling of the Troy story I have read.

Throughout the ages there is one story that continues to intrigue us, losing none of its fascination despite the passage of time, and that is the myth of Helen of Troy. She was, as we know, an incomparable beauty, the woman whose "face launched a thousand ships" and she was also a woman in love whose elopement led to the Trojan War, which is found in Homer's Iliad.

A daughter of Leda, Queen of Sparta, Helen is said to be fathered by none other than Zeus. Still in her teens she is wed to her brother-in-law, Menelaus, which was a politically advantageous arrangement. He probably would not have been her choice, although she did give him a daughter. Nonetheless, it was a loveless marriage.

When Helen first saw the handsome Trojan prince, Paris, the course of history was changed. Before long the two became lovers and fled to Troy. (Depending upon the source, Helen either gladly left Menelaus and her daughter to go with Paris or she was abducted by him.)

Whatever the case, Paris lost his life in the Trojan War and Helen married his brother, Deiphobus, who was later killed by Menelaus. At one time Menelaus had sworn to kill the wife who had forsaken him, but upon seeing Helen again he could not bring himself to do so.

Esteemed author Margaret George (The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scotland) has given us a remarkable work by telling the story in Helen's voice. We are treated to a seldom found immediacy and view of life in Helen's day.

Speaking of voices, classically trained actress Justine Eyre delivers a stunning performance as Helen. Her voice is young, distinct, with just a touch of an accent, very much the way we would expect Helen to sound. At times, she brings a wistfulness to Helen, especially in the Prologue as we hear "I flew back to Troy, no it was more like floating...."

Truly an exceptional listening experience - enjoy!

- Gail Cooke

"Helen of Troy" is a very good book, but it's not author Margaret George's best work. Because Helen is a mythological character, many of the details of her life are rather ambiguous, and so George took many more liberties with this novel than with most of her other books. However, the core of the story remains true to popular mythology. When Helen is a young girl, a seer predicts that the beautiful Spartan princess will be the cause of great tragedy. Helen goes on to marry Menelaus and become the queen of Sparta. The marriage lacks passion, and when Paris, a young Trojan man, visits Sparta, he and Helen fall madly in love. Helen decides to escape with Paris to Troy, leaving her family, husband, and daughter Hermione behind. Helen's actions bring about the Trojan War, and many lives are lost as a result.

One of the problems with this book is that Helen is not a very likeable character. George tries to portray Helen as a strong woman, which she is, but she's also an incredibly selfish person who rejected her family, abandoned her daughter and her duties as queen, and caused a great many people to die...all because she was lusting over Paris. It's hard to come to terms with all that, even though George does her best to gloss over those rather huge portions in the story. As a result, the pacing of the book is rather tedious in places, and failed to capture my attention like "The Autobiography of King Henry VIII" and "Memoirs of Cleopatra." Still, George is a great storyteller, and as someone who is very interested in mythology, I enjoyed reading this new take on a classic tale. "Helen of Troy" is a worthwhile read, but I definitely prefer George's earlier works.

Margaret George brings her epic storytelling talents to the myth of the Trojan War in this engrossing and lush novel.

Helen never feels quite as "real" as George's Cleopatra, or her Henry VIII (though it was often less than pleasant to be inside Henry's head). I can't blame the author for this. Cleopatra and Henry lived lives that have been well-documented by history. With Helen, no one is sure whether she ever existed at all, and the myths that tell her story say little about who she might have been as a person. I think George did a great job using what was available to her, piecing together disparate strands of myth, drawing from what is historically known about how people lived in that period, and making Helen and her loved ones as three-dimensional as possible. I especially thought the development of Helen's relationships with Menelaus and Paris was realistic.

I also liked the treatment of the gods. For most events, George offers both a divine explanation and a mundane one. The reader is left to decide what to believe. One exception was Laocoon's death, which would be hard to explain without divine intervention!

What I wanted to see, and never did see, was a confrontation between Helen and Paris about the "most beautiful woman in the world" issue. Early in the book, Helen refuses to marry any suitor who utters that phrase. Later, Paris recounts to Helen his encounter with the three goddesses, but doesn't tell her what Aphrodite promised him. At the end of that scene, Helen reflects that she had yet to find out what he had been promised. I thought George was foreshadowing an eventual revelation, and I was waiting for the storm that would break when Helen realized Paris had chosen "the most beautiful woman in the world." That scene never came. I will say, though, that the conflict Paris and Helen did have was well-handled and in-character for both of them.

The sack of Troy, when it comes, is frantic and tragic and frightening, and the slow gray wistfulness of Helen's later years is done perfectly, I think.

A good book for a long weekend.

Make no mistake: Margaret George's Helen of Troy is indeed a doorstopper of a book, coming in at over 600 pages, and it could very easily have become bogged down in endless unpronounceable names and illogical storylines. Happily for the reader, the author pulls you in early on and builds the story layer by layer until you realize you've been entrapped in her words that will not let go until the final pages...and probably not until long after that.

This is, of course, the legendary story of Helen of Troy, the "face that launched a thousand ships", and her lover Paris, with whom she leaves all she's known, including a husband, a child, and a kingdom. George has fleshed her characters out well; she's given Helen enough conscience that her guilt feelings seem real, yet we understand why she chose to leave with the god-like Paris. Upon entering Troy, Helen begins to realize the fall-out of her actions will reach much further than simply destroying her family. George gives us the tension leading up to the warfare between the Greeks and the Trojans and though we know the ultimate outcome, it is still heart-wrenching and exhausting.

I really enjoyed this novel. Having been a long-time fan of George's, I found this novel to be a better written and more fascinating glimpse into an historical figure (real or not) than Mary Called Magdalene. Helen, with all her faults, comes through as a woman tortured by both love and loss. George is particularly good at bringing all the warring factions and heroes to life and she keeps them separated by their actions and personalities. I found this to be a credible, fascinating look into an era of history I knew relatively little about. Recommended.

How do I put into words my experience reading this novel? I've only read of the Trojan War from YA fiction--or children's fiction--and, therefore, this novel took me to places and ideas I had never conceived--let alone explored--in the Trojan saga.

Helen, despite her obvious character flaws (she abandons her daughter for lust--I'm a stay at home mother to five, so I find this repulsive), is a sympathetic character. Yes, there are times when you want to whack her on the head and make her stop being so self-obsessed; but, over-all, the author manages to make her someone whose future you care about--even if you cannot relate to her.

After watching the movie "Troy", it was nice to see Paris depicted as someone for whom a woman might leave her duties as queen to follow to a far-away city and become just one-of-many princesses. Menelaus was depicted just so, so that Helen's choice for him as husband, her choice to leave him, and her choice to live out her life with him after the war were all believable. Now Achilles--some may dislike his depiction in this novel.

While the Trojan War is a tragedy, we get little tidbit of justice in the author's novel, as she introduces a post war story I had never read about before. I was disappointed that I didn't get to find out what happened to some of the characters I had grown to care about; but this was, after all, Helen's story, told from her POV, and she would have no way to know how their stories ended. (I had never even contemplated what might have happened to Helen after she was recaptured before reading this novel.)

I thought George was masterful in how she handled the gods of the era. As she states at the end of the book, a personal relationship or dialog with your god is still something people can relate to today, and so her characters also have personal dealings with their gods. However, some of the more fantastic deeds of the gods are not brought in for simple fact that Helen was not privy to what occurred on Mt. Olympus. Brilliantly done!

I simply must add that I respect the author, Margaret George, all the more because she managed to write about Helen without having any gratuitous s*x in it. I could allow my daughters to read this book and they would not learn anything new (s*xually speaking).

Overall, this book is thicker, by simple page count as well as by how meaty each individual page is, than some people will like. If you are looking for a quick, light read, this is not the book for you. Some of it this novel is extremely sad, and some difficult to read, and I cried.

However, if you enjoy literature and historical fiction, and you don't mind a book that may take a week, or even a month, to read--depending on how busy you are--and you don't mind a book that may disturb you at times, or whose heroine isn't a saint, then I recommend "Helen of Troy" to you.

4 1/2 stars. It had a few slow spots.

I found this book to be terribly long - with the emphasis on terribly. It really dragged for me, and although I enjoyed it in parts, I never really loved this book, as I did George's books about Mary Magdalene and Henry VIII.

George did not give us a character we could identify with - but maybe that is the essence of Helen of Troy and Paris. They were very selfish people who tried to disregard the reality of how their lives were affecting everyone else. Or maybe they did care, as George so frequently tells us, if fate had meant it to be, there was nothing they could do about it. Ah ha, another Greek Tragedy.

I would give this a 3 spears out of 5.

I am a big fan of Margaret George, having read four of her five books. I only recently received "Helen of Troy", and what a delight--I couldn't put it down! Although I also truly enjoyed "Cleopatra" and "Henry the VIII", I enjoyed this offering best of all. It completely captivated my interest and--it was truly more compelling and captivating than watching the movie with Brad Pitt! Seriously, though, I believe Margaret George is the Queen of Historical Fiction and her writing in the first person is just incredible and pulls you into the story as if you are experiencing it firsthand. If you have read her before, you won't be disappointed. If "Helen of Troy" is your first read, I'm sure you'll buy her other books! All are great vacation/winter reads!

Theresa

Remember your college Greek mythology classes? If your memory is a little fuzzy, it will all come flooding back to you when you read Margaret George's Helen of Troy. Ms. George recreates the story from Helen's point of view and beginning with Helen's childhood, she paints a fairly vivid picture of Helen's family, her home of Sparta, and the circumstances that led to her sad marriage to Menelaus. When Paris enters the picture, as I'm sure you remember, it's pretty much game-over and the beautiful Helen is spirited off to Troy, leading to the infamous Trojan War.

Peripheral characters make the novel quite enjoyable: Priam, Agamemnon, Cytemnestra, Odysseus and Hector, amongst others, all make a good showing and are quite developed, character-wise, for a novel this length. (I'm sure 638 pages seems like a lot, but for the legend this encompasses, Ms. George had to condense quite a bit here.)

Now for my reaction: I never quite developed any sympathy for Helen and Paris. Their utter selfishness came across as irritating, as opposed to uncontrollable fate. I continually felt the need to give Helen a slap and tell her to "buck up." Paris came across as immature - not a man to fall in love with, but a boy who feels entitled to whatever he wants, at any cost. The supporting cast is delightful, however, and made the story worth a read.

This isn't a so-called "heavy read" by any means. It rather strikes me as something that might be classified as a summer beach novel. Fun, but not serious historical fiction.

One of the challenges in reading a novel such as this is to try to separate your own views, preferences and interpretations from those presented by the author. Not because one is 'right' and the other is 'wrong' but simply because the quality of fiction really should rest on the story as presented.

I enjoyed this novel: all 600+ pages of it. I never really formed a clear picture of Helen but I certainly obtained a number of different views of her. Helen as daughter, wife, lover, ruler and mother are each covered. Helen as a woman is less accessible, at least to me. The narrative descriptions of life in Sparta and Troy appealed to me, as did the relationship between mankind and the Gods.

'The age of heroes had truly passed' but memories of them will live on forever.

Recommended to those who both enjoy George's narrative style and those who want to read well-written fiction about Helen of Troy.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith