Customer Reviews

The Return from Troy

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I read Lindsay Clarke's "The War at Troy" before "The Return from Troy" was released and since I enjoyed the first book so much, I couldn't wait for the arrival of the second. I haven't read Homer's works since college and, quite frankly, don't have as much time to decipher the format as I used to. However, I enjoy the actual stories so much that I was anxious to find versions that were easier to read while still interesting. Clarke's books were exactly what I was looking for. I couldn't put either of them down and highly recommend them both.

Clarke's The Return from Troy belongs on the bookshelf alongside such Trojan classics as Colleen McCullough's The Song of Troy and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Firebrand. It is both well written and well told. At times, especially in the novel's first half, I was struck by the beauty of Clarke's words. His talent as a stylist elevates his prose to an artform. The grace and poignance remind me of Mary Renault's historical novels. His retelling of the Odyssey is as much as a psychodrama as an adventure, and some of the themes he unearths--the connection between violence and passion and the guilt of war--haunted me days after finishing the book. One of the points particularly struck me, and I'm surprised that I never thought of it before after reading so much about Troy. In Odysseus's words: "You mean that Agamemnon and the others fought for all those years to bring home another man's faithless wife, only to find themselves betrayed by their own wives while they were gone?" I'm still contemplating the irony and significance in that statement.

To be honest, I think that the first half of the novel is much stronger than the second half. Once Odysseus meets Circe and Calypso, the novel delves deeper into psychodrama, and although the ideas are interesting, the prose and story progression lose steam. I also consider Clytaemnestra to be a strong character, and the novel suffers when she makes her exit. Furthermore, I think that the volume of narration and exposition is sometimes overwhelming: Perhaps a better balance of narration, dialogue, and action would have been more effective.

These quibbles are minor and do not detract from my high opinion of Clarke's novel. I hope that he continues to write historical/mythic fiction.

The story covers Odysseus' return from Troy and the aftermath in a way it could realistically have happened. However as well as a chilling account of the tragedy at Troy's fall the story sets the scene for the eventual collapse of the Mycenaeans (the conquerers of Troy).

The Trojan War is over `The War at Troy' the sacking of the city itself is finished and Agamemnon is already aboard ship and sailing back to Mycenae where his wife Clytaemnestra has been nursing a feeling of hatred for the husband who sacrificed their daughter Iphigenaia to the God's, with some success it may be added, because the storm that had held them trapped in port had abated with the death of his daughter. Allowing the fleet to sail to Troy and lay siege to the city.

Meanwhile Menelaus must decide the fate of the woman Helen, whose beauty started the whole confrontation in the first place. Odysseus, sickened by the scale of the slaughter is own ingenuity has unleashed no longer believes himself a fit person to return to his wife and son. Driven by storms and his own tormented mind he sets out on a journey that will take him to the edge of the known world. A journey that will take him even deeper into his own soul before events happen that free him to make the long journey home.