Customer Reviews

Ransom: A Novel

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Ransom: A Novel retells -- with certain changes -- the story of Troy's king Priam hazarding across the battle lines into the enemy camp of the Achaean warrior, Achilles. He takes a cart of gold which he intends to pay in ransom for the body of his dead son, Hector, whom Achilles killed in retribution for the death, in battle, of Achilles' great friend, Patroclus.

This short novel opens with Achilles mourning Patroclus by the seaside where the Greeks and their ships have been beached for nine long years. In Part I he does the deed of vengeance and then drags the body behind his chariot, day after day. "All this, he tells himself, is for you, Patroclus." He wants to see Patroclus' ghost, who came before, but his comrade does not answer.

The focus then shifts to Priam. Unable to bear what is happening to Hector's body, he, with a little encoragement from the goddess Iris, declares to his family and court that he will dress as a common man and take a mule cart laden with treasure to Achilles as ransom for his son. Hecuba, his first among wives, cannot dissuade him from what would almost certainly be a suicide mission. When she asks what will save him, he replies: perhaps the gods.

At dusk, the wagon departs the safety of Troy, and for more than fifty pages, the journey of the next few hours takes center stage. Devoting so much space to this when the Priam/Achilles meeting to which it leads is covered in thirty-four pages suggests the author, David Malouf, believes the adage about it being the journey, not the destination, that matters. Driving mules called, significantly, Beauty and Shock, the carter is, instead of from Homer's actual king's herald, a common man - the only one among gods, kings, and great warriors. Malouf wants a character of his own in this retelling, and he wants to relate his own version of what happened between the time the cart left Troy and it arrived in the enemy's camp after dark. Besides nearly drowning in the fast river currents and meeting an odd guide of sorts, Priam expands his understanding of life in this interval, especially as the hay-wain driver tells about the loss of his own sons.

The shared bond of fatherhood may also be the key with Achilles when Priam is finally face to face with him. Achilles has a son whom he has not seen since before the war began, and surely he would want to be able to hold a proper funeral for him if he were to die? At the Greek camp, Malouf alters some of The Iliad (Penguin Classics) story, electing something more collaborative and conciliatory than the original.

Once finished, one may feel that RANSOM could have done more with Priam, Achilles, and other original characters from THE ILIAD. The meeting -- and some earlier areas of the book also -- seems cramped and incomplete, as though Malouf felt self-conscious about expanding on those points that are pegged but also not dwelled upon in THE ILIAD. And that's too bad because several times, the text almost cries out for additional insights. The author, however, felt more comfortable with his own creative paths. His stated reason for writing it: "But the primary interest is in storytelling itself -- why stories are told and why we need to hear them, how stories get changed in the telling -- and much of what it has to tell are 'untold tales' found only in the margins of earlier writers." Arguably, Malouf could have written another book about a cart driver and a king and left the Trojan War out of it.

The novel's language is often hauntingly picturesque and resonates emotionally and mystically. This, for instance: "The sea surface bellies and glistens, a lustrous silver-blue -- a membrane stretched to a fine transparency where once, for nine changes of the moon, he had hung curled in a dream of pre-existence and was rocked and comforted." Malouf is a master of lyrical prose.

RANSOM, in conclusion, is a fast-reading book that captivates with its language and provokes thought with its message and symbols, but falls a little short on shedding light on these two giants of Greek literature. Despite some opportunities for character building and story fleshing that were not taken, Malouf's supplement to Homer's great work is very worthwhile. It illustrates that looking into the blackness of the despair and shock of mourning and destiny can allow for a glimpse of the invisible, the eternal, and the beautiful.

RANSOM is not a book. It's a time machine. Give it the slightest chance, accept it on its own terms, and it will carry you back to King Priam's meeting with Achilles just as surely as Somax's simple mule cart in this story carried Priam himself to that same meeting. Each word is smoothly polished and carefully fitted into the beautifully structured whole, creating a story that is as well crafted as a poem and which will grip you just as tightly as if you were in the wooded hills of Greece sitting around and gazing into a late evening campfire listening to Malouf spin his magical yarn of Priam's trip to find and to meet Achilles -- a short two day trip that turns out to contain almost as many life-lessons both for Priam and indeed for all of us all as did Odysseus's ten year journey home to Ithaca after the war. Throughout the trip Somax unknowingly serves for Priam much the same humanizing function as did the Roman slaves who during parades stood immediately behind returning generals in their chariots continually whispering into their ears "Remember, thou art but a man". And in so doing Somax opens vital new vistas in Priam's old mind. Observing this process is especially compelling for those of us over a certain age who will feel close to King Priam as we ourselves ride forward toward our own destinies, making peace with many painful things as we go. This book is a gem.
Kenneth E. MacWilliams

David Malouf's Ransom is a re-imagining of the events narrated in book 24 of Homer's Iliad. Achilles, mad with grief over the death of his friend Patroclus at Hector's hands, has slain Hector in turn. But contrary to convention, still savage in his unquenchable grief, Achilles daily abuses Hector's body, dragging it behind his chariot around the Greeks' camp, the insult further sorrow to Hector's parents and to the rest of the Trojans. Hector's father, Priam, the King of Troy, is visited by the goddess Iris, who bids him travel to the Greek camp and ransom his son's body. Priam does this, Achilles relents, and Priam returns home with the corpse, which the gods have preserved from decay and Achilles' degradations. Book 24 ends with Hector's funeral.

In Malouf's version the gods are not so clear in their intent. A divine vision gives Priam the glimmer of an idea, that, just perhaps, there is room for man to change his destiny through action, that the gods do not necessarily determine everything. From this spark is borne the idea of the ransom and Priam's journey to the Greek camp. The act is unprecedented. It is not done for a king to step outside his role as figurehead and act as mere man, a mortal father. Priam--apart from a day when he was six years old and seemed destined to a future as a slave--has lived his life in a royal bubble. In the real world he is an innocent, unused to the most mundane of experiences.

The most interesting thing that Malouf does with his story is to introduce a new character. In the Iliad Priam is accompanied on his trip to the Greek camp by his herald Idaeus. In Ransom Priam's companion is a simple carter, Somax, the owner of a pair of black mules and a wagon. For the purpose of the journey, because he is accustomed to being escorted by an Idaeus--though the man behind the name may change--Somax is given the herald's identity. It is Priam's experience passing time with this normal man, who, though respectful, has not been drenched in the royal conventions, that wakes Priam up to the realities of life lived outside the bubble.

Ransom is a short book, but it deserves a slow read. Malouf's syntax sometimes requires concentration; his language is very often beautiful:

"Achilles grunted, gave the sword another push. The whole weight of his body hung on the thrust. Weightless himself. All the force of his brute presence gone now into the blade as he urged it in. There was a still, extended moment when they were joined, he and Hector, by three hand-spans of tempered bronze."

It deserves mention too that the book itself, as physical object, is a beautiful thing, a small hardcover with Somax's black mule in shadows on the cover, and the texture of the dust jacket, somehow, like velvet. Much as I love reading on my Kindle, it can't match the experience of holding a book in this particular case.

-- Debra Hamel

David Malouf's "Ransom" is a gem, a lovely 5-part little 219-page novel, starring Achilles, his friend Patroclus (briefly), the King of Troy Priam, Priam's wife and son Hector (briefly) and Somax, a day laborer. It is a perfect novel, parsimonious, absorbing, and filled with an extensive, thoughtful philosophy describing what it means to be a human being. In some ways, it is a parable.

Malouf's other sensational novel, "An Imaginary Life" (see my review), touched on what it means to be civilized. Taken together, these marvelously told stories should be on everyone's reading list because they epitomize how great modern (though historical) novels are constructed.

The primary chacater is the old man Priam, who devises a radical, risky, creative plan to retrieve Hector's body from the avenging and unforgiving Achilles.

In some ways the story is a bit gory and violent, but these features are alleviated by Australian Malouf's lyrical prose. He is simply a great story teller, a touch better (perhaps) than Canada's Alastair MacLeod("No
Great Mischief" -- see my review). While MacLeods' story telling genius charms you, Malouf goes farther and makes you think, reflect and remember (not unlike Anabel Lyon's "The Golden Mean" -- see my review).

There are flashes of humor, little examples of the Trojan War, often revealing the vast ignorance about the world they had back then -- brought to life in the character of Somax, a plain but philosophical, rough day laborer, who doubles as Priam's teacher and cart driver on their expedition to retrieve Hector.

What's the book about? It's about having sons -- children, raising them, nourishing them, loving them, watching them become adults. It's about brotherly love (and perhaps further, normal love between some men), living in the moment, understanding your mortality and joy. It's also very sad, describing ultimate and devastating loss. Achilles builds a funeral pyre for Patroclus on a scale equal only to the pyre built by Alexander the Great -- after the death of his life-long lover, Hephaestion.

I read it essentially in one "sitting," on long flights from San Francisco to Europe. Read it and enjoy. It's a winner and a clear 5 on Amazon's rating scale.

In this novel, David Malouf re-enters the world of the Iliad, to recount the story of Achilles, Patroclus and Hector and provides a very different telling of Priam's journey to the Greek camp. And what a wonderful storytelling it is!

`Dreams are subtle, shifting, they are meant to be read, not taken literally.'

At the end of the novel, Mr Malouf writes that the primary focus of the story is on storytelling itself: why stories are told and why we need to hear them; how stories get changed in the telling; and how much of what it has to tell are `untold tales' found only in the margins of earlier writers. It is possible to read the novel simply enjoying the story without wondering about these broader issues, but they add their own dimension to the writing. It is possible, too, to enjoy this novel without any detailed knowledge of the Iliad. In my case, at least, it stirs a revisiting of the world of the Iliad and probably of the Odyssey, to enjoy those legends anew.

`This old fellow, like most story tellers, is a stealer of other men's tales, of other men's lives.'

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

David Malouf, who first visited the classical world near the start of his career with AN IMAGINARY LIFE (1978), about the poet Ovid, now returns to it with his latest novel RANSOM, a retelling of the last book of THE ILIAD. This short book, its small beautiful pages fitting easily into the hand, is nonetheless vast in scale, fully worthy of its original. Malouf writes as a poet, beginning with Homeric grandeur, but moving towards simple humanity. He strikes the heroic tone early in describing Achilles, his life shaped by foreknowledge of his certain death: "He had entered the rough world of men, where a man's acts follow him wherever he goes in the form of a story. A world of pain, loss, dependency, bursts of violence and elation; of fatality and fatal contradictions, breathless leaps into the unknown; at last of death -- a hero's death out there in the full sunlight under the gaze of gods and men, for which the hardened self, the hardened body, had daily to be exercised and prepared."

By the end of Homer's epic, Achilles has slain the Trojan hero Hector, in revenge for the killing of his best friend Patroclus. Not content with that, he degrades the body by tying it by the heels to his chariot axle and dragging it around the camp. By evening, the corpse is bloodied and unrecognizable, but each night it is magically restored to its former purity. This goes on for eleven days. Homer then describes how Priam, the Trojan king and Hector's father, goes alone to Achilles with a cart laden with treasure, which he offers in ransom for the body of his son. Malouf's novel is the story of that single incident, the same in every important detail, but how different in tone!

As he does throughout THE ILIAD, Homer opens this final book with a scene for the gods in Olympus. They argue about the situation on earth, and eventually dispatch various deities to prepare Achilles, command Priam, and guide him safely on his way. Homer's mortals are effectively the puppets of the gods. But Malouf sees the story entirely in human terms (though one god does make a cameo appearance). Priam, who had himself been ransomed as a child, conceives the idea himself, over the opposition of his courtiers. As a king, he had always served as a remote ceremonial figurehead; his intent now is to put off all signs of rank and grandeur, and travel in a mule cart with a simple peasant as driver. For me, the heart of this deeply moving novel is this journey shared by the two old men, the one in his element, the other learning about it for the first time. "The water, the fish, the flocks of snub-tailed swifts had always been here, engaged in their own lives and the small activities that were proper to them, pursuing their own busy ends. But till now he had had no occasion to take notice of them. They were not in the royal sphere." For the first time Priam finds himself talking with a man who is not constrained by ceremony or rank, and he finds himself first interested in and then moved by the story of his small joys and many sorrows.

With his newfound humanity as a shield, Priam approaches Achilles as man to man, father to father, mourner to fellow mourner. And his entreaty succeeds, as Homer tells. It buys only a short respite, but it lays down a marker for human beings taking their destiny out of the hands the gods. Perhaps only in small things: Troy will yet fall, Priam will die, and Achilles also. But the acceptance of death is a form of grandeur, and to cling to simple humanity in a cruel world is true nobility.

Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf tells the story of the king of Troy, Priam's grief-stricken voyage into the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth for the body of his fallen son, Hector, killed by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story in sparse, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer related. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece of story telling.

Of course, Malouf is not the first great writer to be inspired by Homer - writers from Shakespeare through to, more recently, Margaret Atwood's `'Penelopiad'`, have gone down this route before. Malouf, like Atwood, takes some of the events and characters of the source, and creates new stories, filling in the personal thought processes and stories of Homer's characters in a thoroughly modern way. If your main medium is the spoken word, as Homer's tale would have been literally retold, you have to concentrate on the action to keep your listeners enthralled. Malouf fills in some of these gaps for us.

'Ransom' relates the story from the point of view of three main characters - Priam, Achilles and, the beautifully drawn character of Malouf's own invention, Somax, a humble carter who is plucked from obscurity to be chosen to drive the ransom, in the company of his king, into the heart of the Greek camp. His sense of bewilderment in mixing with the great names of the war is palpable. In return, he introduces Priam to the world of idle chit chat which equally mystifies his royal self.

It's a book very much about individuals and the choices they make to achieve what they are meant to achieve. It is these choices, which in Homer seem more like fate (and the influence of all those annoying gods), that Malouf offers us the modern and human side to these stories.

So, yes, there's a fair bit of anger, grief and the effects of war, but it's far from a gloomy read. The touch of the writing is sublimely light and there are plenty of wry moments. It's a slim novel and I would happily have spent more time with any of these characters.

This is a superlative book that adds a poingnant and vibrant dimension to the well-known story of the Iliad. It is especially revealing on the isolation of a king and a father from acting out roles that require them to distance themselves from what they love. The story is about the re-discovery of the beauty and tenuousness of life amidst an overwhelming sense of mortality. It is a quick and easay read, but fundamentally heartbreaking. Very close to perfect!

When I was seventeen it was a very good year with small town girls and soft summer nights but also days spent in my classroom reading the Iliad in Homeric Greek.
Decades later I still can conjure up memories of the story and the girl. But callow youth and struggles with grammar and vocabulary prevented me from understanding the universality and emotional depth of the story.
Malouf has done that. It is a truly wonderful book and beautifully written. Knowledge of the story would help but it is not a necessity.

I would have liked to have known that I would not be able to read the first few pages because of damage.