Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Imbued with humanity, July 7, 2000
Colleen McCullough creates a masterful and compelling retelling of the Trojan War. She takes an ancient story of heroic betrayal, vengeance, and hate, and imbues it with humanity. Never have the ramifications of Paris' and Helen's love affair been so fascinating or comprehensible. This epic story is told through the perspectives of the various people involved: Helen, Odysseus, Priam, Achilles, Agamemmon, Brise, and more. Although they do not cease their heroic natures, they lose their demigod standings. As a result, we become empathetic of each character's motivations. Perhaps one of the reasons we gain empathy for the characters is because they operate independently of the gods. That is, although members of the Olympic pantheon are invoked on numerous occasions, never is an event seen which may only be defined by supernatural means. Nevertheless, only Odysseus has agnostic thoughts. However, the main reasons we gain empathy for these characters is McCullough's wonderful imaginative talent and the formiddable strength of her writing. Her turns of phrase are poetically inspired. Only with reluctance could I put this book down. I did not want this book to end.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bewitching Tale About Mythic Heroes. , September 2, 2005
Ms McCullough is a well known author since the publication of her very first novel: "The Thorn Birds" (1977). This kind of success is difficult to maintain in successive publications. Not for her!
Her second huge success was her "Roman Saga" started in 1990 with "The First Man in Rome" and followed by many interesting and documented volumes.
"The Song of Troy" (1998) is a forceful retelling of the Trojan War Epic.
The author writes each chapter as told from a different main character: from Priam to Hector; from Achilles to Agamemnon and from Helen to Hecuba. Every side in conflict has his saying, allowing the reader to make up his own mind about justice, common sense, madness, love, hatred and stubbornness displayed by each subject.
For each Hero or Heroine Ms McCullough has constructed a very verisimilar persona based on classic texts material, personal intuition and literary sagacity.
This book reveals Ms McCullough has done a profound research in Classic texts such as Greek Tragedies "Iphigenia in Aulis", "Helen" and "Ajax" from Euripides and Sophocles; Epic Poems as "Iliad", "Little Iliad", "Odyssey" and "Aeneid" from Homer and Virgil.
She blends everything in a seamless coherent text with a modern and engaging prose giving the reader the possibility to get acquainted with the Trojan Drama from its start till the final scenes in only one volume.
There are two points of the novel that astounded and delighted me: the first is how the author avoids the direct appearance of Olympic Gods without eluding the influence of supernatural on human actions and the second is the very rational explanation she devices to clear the shocking conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles.
I strongly recommend this book to every reader interested in Trojan War, ancient Greece and historical novel.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Trojan war retold in a humane & modern way., November 17, 2000
Ms McCullough tells the story of the trojan war in a most interesting way - a political context is presented, the characters' psyche, set of mind, and motivations are presented, and the plot is broken into chapters, each told by a character around which that part of the plot turns, e.g. By Helen, Achiles, and Priamus.The storytelling is great - I was touched by the scene in which Priamus leaves Troy and comes to Achilles and asks him to give him Hector's body so he could give him proper burial, which is minimalist yet touches the heart. This way the plot comes to life, rather than being retold as a myth or dry history, and makes for a great reading. The book is written as prose and doesnt go into great detail when it comes to describing material which isnt a part of the plot (e.g. the ornaments on shields), which makes it more readable than a faithful translation of Homer's Illiad (it's noteworthy that Ms McCullough used material not only from Homer but from other sources as well, such as Virgil and Hesiod). This book makes for a long reading - it took me several hours of reading over a two weeks period - but I enjoyed it a lot, and recommend it with all my heart.
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