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Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles: A Novel Paperback – August 28, 2012

by Madeline Miller (Author)

3,006 ratings

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“At once a scholar’s homage to The Iliad and startlingly original work of art by an incredibly talented new novelist….A book I could not put down.”
—Ann Patchett

“Mary Renault lives again!” declares Emma Donoghue, author of Room, referring to The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War. A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“I loved it.” (J.K. Rowling)

“Fast, true and incredibly rewarding…A remarkable achievement.” (USA Today)

“Wildly romantic [and] surprisingly suspenseful....[B]ringing those dark figures back to life, making them men again, and while she’s at it, us[ing] her passionate companion piece to The Iliad as a subtle swipe at today’s ongoing debate over gay marriage. Talk about updating the classics.” (Time magazine)

“One of the best novelistic adaptations of Homer in recent memory, and it offers strikingly well-rounded and compassionate portrait of Achilles....[Miller] injects a newfound sense of suspense into a story with an ending that has already been determined.” (Wall Street Journal)

“Powerful, inventive, passionate, and beautifully written. ” (Boston Globe)

“Beautifully done. . ..In prose as clean and spare as the driving poetry of Homer, Miller captures the intensity and devotion of adolescent friendship and lets us believe in these long-dead boys...deepening and enriching a tale that has been told for 3,000 years.” (Washington Post)

“One of 2012’s most exciting debuts...seductive, hugely entertaining....[I]magining the intimate friendship between Achilles and the devoted Patroclus...Miller conjures...soulmates. The resulting novel is cinematic―one might say epic―in scope, but refreshingly, compellingly human in detail.” (Vogue)

“You don’t need to be familiar with Homer’s The Iliad (or Brad Pitt’s Troy, for that matter) to find Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles spellbinding....her explorations of ego, grief, and love’s many permutations are both familiar and new....[A] timeless love story.” (O magazine)

“Madeline Miller’s brilliant first novel...is a story of great, passionate love between Achilles and Patroclus....[R]ewriting the Western world’s first and greatest war novel is an awesome task to undertake. That she did it with such grace, style and suspense is astonishing.” (Dallas Morning News)

“The Song of Achilles...should be read and enjoyed for itself, but if Madeline Miller’s novel sends the reader back to Homer and his successors, she is to be thanked for that as well.” (Washington Independent Review of Books)

From the Back Cover

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful— irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

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Product details

Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Ecco; 37696th edition (August 28, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062060627
ISBN-13: 978-0062060624
Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.4 x 7.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 2,811 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #488 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- #46 in Classic American Literature
- #189 in Classic Literature & Fiction

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Eric Danklefsen

The love story (gay or not) is the point of this book.

August 1, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I have never read the Iliad, and I thought it might be fun to delve into a modern treatment of the story. This book had so many great reviews that it seemed worth buying. However, I stopped reading the novel when I was about 30% of the way through. By this time it became clear that the author was going to make the romance between Patroclus and Achilles the centerpiece of the book. For instance as teens, Achilles and Patroclus spend two or three years in the wilderness with a centaur who is supposed to be instructing Achilles in the art of war... except he doesn't. Patroclus is not supposed to be in the wilderness with them, but he tags along anyway. This means that Patroclus himself has the opportunity to learn the art of war from this great centaur who taught Heracles how to fight, but Patroclus doesn't either. It appears that the only reason these two were with centaur in the wilderness for a couple years was to allow the author to crate a bucolic love nest for the boys. And for unexplained reasons, Achilles' mother, Thetis, seems to have always hated Patroclus. Again from a Romance-novel point-of-view, her intense animosity seems to exist only to create a "forbidden love" situation between Patroclus and Achilles. It all seemed so contrived.

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PeterB

Homoeroticism in a neomytholocical landscape

January 16, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Thought i was buying a new conception of a Homeric myth. Instead I found myself muddling through a homoerotic romance novel about a weakling, a "jock" and an overbearing mother. Yeah some mythological reference is tossed in the salad but I quit this self indulgence about a third of the way through. Don't be fooled by the title. Positive reviews are a mystery to me. I got nothing against love stores whoever the lovers are but I don't enjoy romance novels, historic, contemporary or pseudo-mythological, especially where the partners are unequal. This is not a retelling of myth. Speculation into the private lives, loves and bedrooms of classical gods, demigods and heroes does little if anything to enhance understanding of the ground upon which classicism was built. At best it grants insight into the authors's fantasies in which I am frankly not interested.

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Sarahocha

I don't cry over books but, I sobbed with this one.

July 11, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Starting this book I was at a strong 3.5 stars, then it bumped up to 4, and then the end had me in such a mess that it suddenly became 5. A miracle this is.

The story and plot revolves around the Trojan war and the moments before and after where Patroclus meets Achilles and laters waits for him. The flow is actually quite gentle, even during the war fighting. I had expected more action and heart racing moments, and that is maybe why I did not rush into a higher rating.

However, even though I had a feeling of who and the knowledge of death, I was still struck hard. It did not come on suddenly, no. It crept slowly, clung to my heart and then watered in my eyes. It was the reaction to death that got me.

The end is beautiful and sweet. It brings together the readers and the characters who are in pain and comforts us and makes us allies.

The writing is also wonderful. It's poetic and lovely at times. Of course if you do not like things being compared to unrelated things, such as the plumpness of lips to that of a bee, then you will disagree with me here. Regardless, this is the writing style I most adore in moderation and thus have loved this book.

183 people found this helpful

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An Inspired Retelling Of The Iliad

June 13, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

For better or for worse, the Homeric epics are a bedrock part of the Western literary canon. Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles looks at The Iliad from a fresh perspective: that of Patroclus, Achilles' closest companion. Since this is a retelling of a classic story (a genre to which I am predisposed), we already know how it's going to play out: Agamemnon will steal a slave girl claimed by Achilles, leading to the hero refusing to fight for the Greeks, leading to Patroclus donning his armor and being slain by Hector of Troy, leading to Achilles killing Hector and dragging him around the walls of his city, only to be killed himself by an arrow from Hector's brother Paris. What's different is what comes before and between.

As most of us know, it was not uncommon in Ancient Greek life for older men to have sexual relationships with younger men. Homosexual relationships between men of the same age, however, were rarer. When I was taught The Iliad, even in college, the bond between Patroclus and Achilles was usually described as just a deep friendship (lip service was paid to the idea they could have been lovers but it was never taught as being the more persuasive interpretation). Miller's novel, however, roots itself in the alternate interpretation: she presents us with Achilles, the most gifted warrior in Greece, as a man in a loving and stable lifelong relationship with Patroclus.

It would actually be more accurate to say she presents us with Patroclus as the romantic partner of Achilles: the story belongs to Patroclus, it is told through his eyes. Patroclus as created by Miller is a gentle soul, a disappointment to his aggressive father, who is banished when he kills another child purely by accident. He is sent to Peleus, father of Achilles, to be fostered, and is chosen by Achilles of all the young men at court to be his companion. Their relationship only gradually becomes romantic, much to the disgust of Achilles' river goddess mother, Thetis. She conspires more than once to break the couple apart, but their love is too strong and they remain together until the end. Miller explains Achilles' rage over the theft of his slave girl as being not about being deprived of a lover, but as being disrespected as the greatest soldier in the army by having his rightfully-claimed prize taken away.

I found it a much more enjoyable take on the story than the original. Miller really gets the time to develop Patroclus and Achilles as characters in depicting them from boyhood all the way through adulthood. She paints a very devoted relationship between them: though both briefly experiment with sex with women, they never stray from each other and Achilles refuses to leave Patroclus despite strong maternal pressure to do so. Since Miller's Patroclus isn't a skilled or enthusiastic warrior and instead serves the Greek contingent at Troy as a healer, most of the battlefield scenes that I find so boring to read are left out entirely. This is a solid read for fans of historical fiction and/or classical retellings.

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Kindle Customer

A little misleading

March 10, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I thought the writing and wording was very fanciful and evocative. The story seem very interesting and there was a lot of build-up. Yet, I think I was misled because the story is really about gay love. Which is fine, but I wish this was made more obvious in the reviews. I guess I was expecting something else but after reading through the first seven chapters, I knew I didn't want to continue anymore because I thought the subject matter should have been made more clear. Most of the reviews make it about a story that retails the illiad. However, it's really about the manlove between achilles and his partner. There's also a war and battles that surrounds their romance, but that's all background material.

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