Love and War From a Different Point of View: A Review of Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Back in 2019, I read Madeline Miller’s amazing book Circe, a retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey, but from the point of view of the witch Circe, who famously had turned Odysseus’s men into pigs before becoming his lover for a time. It was one of my most memorable reads in recent years as it breathed new life into that classic tale. But this was not Ms. Miller’s first time retelling a classic Greek myth from an interesting point of view. Back in 2012, she debuted with this book, which is a retelling of Homer’s The Iliad, from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’s lover. Now that I have finally read this book, I am pleased to say that if you loved Circe, then you are also going to love The Song of Achilles too.

As said above, this book revolves around Patroclus, the companion and lover to the greatest of the Greek warriors during the Trojan War, Achilles, whose tragic death in battle at the hands of the great Trojan warrior Hector spurs Achilles into a vengeful rage on the battlefield until he has killed Hector himself.  Patroclus is not at all like Achilles, who was descended from the king of Phithia and a sea-nymph.  Instead, Patroclus has no godly blood and, though he descends from royalty, he finds himself exiled at a young age to Phithia.  He has no special talents, except perhaps at healing, and he is certainly not a great warrior like Achilles.  Yet Achilles takes a shine to Patroclus soon after his arrival and the two become unlikely friends and then lovers.  But when the Trojan War calls Achilles to the battlefield and his destiny, Patroclus follows him and seals his own tragic fate.

Just like Circe, telling this story from the point of view of a minor character such as Patroclus, Ms. Miller gives a fresh perspective on a familiar story that is thousands of years old.  Though Patroclus is no demigod nor a great warrior like Achilles, it is absolutely surprising how many great figures he stumbles across in his travels.  Odysseus, Agammemnon, and Helen are just some of the famous characters Patroclus interacts with.  Ms. Miller is even able to connect other minor characters in The Iliad to other famous Greek myths.  For example, Ms. Miller points out that Nestor, who is just an old man and an advisor to Agammemnon in The Iliad, was actually one of the Argonauts who travelled alongside such mythological figures as Jason and Herakles (i.e. Hercules).  This not only fleshes out a minor character in The Iliad, but shows just how interconnected Greek mythology was, sort of like how all of the movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are connected to each other today.

Another wonderful part about this book is how it relates stories that were not even in The Iliad.  After all, the Trojan War lasted ten years, but The Iliad happens years after the start of the war.  So events such as Helen’s choosing of Menelaus for her husband, the blood oath Helen’s suitors swore to protect her, and Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, which were not included in The Iliad, are all related in this book.  Ms. Miller has synthesized most of these stories into one book, which gives readers a fuller picture of the Trojan War than The Iliad or any of the classical Greek plays do.

The only issue I had with this book was with the ending.  As mentioned above, Patroclus tragically dies in The Iliad at the hands of Hector and that’s what happens here too.  But while that would seem to be a natural ending point for this book, Ms. Miller finds a way extend the tale to keep Patroclus as the main POV character, but relate events that happened well after his death.  I won’t spoil how she does that and it’s not an entirely unwelcome plot device, nor is this book concluded in an unsatisfactory manner because of it.  But by using this plot device, I felt as though Ms. Miller extended the story just a bit too far beyond its natural end point.  That said, this is a very minor gripe that I have with the book that does not diminish my overall enjoyment of it.

In short, The Song of Achilles is a fabulous book that, like Circe after it, retells a familiar Greek myth in a way that breaths new life into it.  If you liked Circe or if you are just a fan of ancient mythologies and retellings, you should pick up and read this book right away.

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Community Connections: A Review of Still Water Saints by Alex Espinoza

Still Water Saints by Alex Espinoza

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Despite our world being hyper-connected by the internet and social media, it can at times feel as though society is losing touch with the things that connect us to each other as a local community, whether they be certain people, places or beliefs. In this slow, but poignant tale, Alex Espinoza writes about a year in the life of a botaníca shop, its Latina owner, and the lives of the people connected to it, even in just a tangential way.

Perla is the owner of the botaníca shop at the heart of this novel.  She’s a widow who has been running the shop for years that specializes in selling home remedies for people’s ailments whether they be physical, emotional, or spiritual.  During the year catalogued in this novel, Perla befriends a young, undocumented immigrant named Rodrigo whom she comes to care for deeply.  His traumatic past affects Perla deeply and she tries to help him far more than any of the other people who come through her shop.  At the same time, the main plot is broken up by a series of first person narratives of people who are connected to Perla’s shop, even if they just stopped in for a short visit.  While the main plot is quite linear, these sub plots seem to bounce around the timeline a little bit.  

Mr. Espinoza displays a great deal of empathy for his characters throughout this book.  While Perla is the main character, each of the main characters in the sub plots also shine in unique ways.  While some of their connections to Perla and her shop are rather small, they all interact in these ways that are poignant nonetheless.  This helps to drive home one of the books themes about how even the briefest connections we have to each other can still have some of the most profound consequences.

That said, this book is very slow.  While the sub plots are interesting, they do draw some of the narrative attention away from the the main story surrounding Perla and Rodrigo.  Indeed, while Perla and Rodrigo’s story is poignant and even tragic, it’s resolution is a letdown and doesn’t seem to really have a lasting impact on Perla or the community.  Indeed, some of the sub plots have a more satisfying resolution than Perla’s does.  

Overall, while this book is rather touching, the main plot is slow and the sub plots seem more interesting in comparison.  Some of them even get resolved in a more satisfying way than the main plot.  I would recommend this book for people who are looking to slow their reading down a bit and reflect on the important connections in their community, no matter how small they may be.

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Do Not Throw Away Your Shot: A Review of Furia

Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Life is not always easy on a person’s dreams, especially on a young woman’s dreams in a country where gender equality is not highly valued. In this excellent YA novel, Ms. Méndez perfectly balances drama and romance to tell the tale of a young woman in Argentina pursuing her impossible dream: to become a professional fútbol player.

Camila is a Palestinian-Argentine teen who has been forbidden from playing fútbol (soccer for American audiences) by her mother and abusive father.  But unbeknownst to them, Camila is the star fútbol player on her teen girl’s team known as Furia who has a real shot at going pro.  But things start to get complicated as her older brother’s pro fútbol career continues to thrive and Diego, a local boy who has made a reputation as El Títan in the Italian fútbol league and who has had a crush on Camila since they were kids, comes back home.  As all of these things collide, Camila has to make a choice between her love and her dream.

The first couple of chapters made me a bit concerned.  With all of these multiple narrative threads, it was difficult to figure out where exactly this book was going in the beginning.  I also feared that this book would tip over too much into typical YA romance territory with lots of melodrama.  Fortunately, like her main character, Ms. Méndez knows the story that she wants to tell and begins to thread these multiple plots together brilliantly.  This is not a sappy YA romance, nor does the ending feel like it magically happened.  There are real consequences to Camila’s choices and some of them nearly put her dreams out of reach.

Because there are multiple plot points throughout this novel, some don’t get as much play as I feel they should have.  In particular, Ms. Méndez is able to weave a bit of Argentine politics into this novel.  Argentina’s battle over women’s rights in general and abortion in particular is prevalent in the background of this book and even has a bit of a moment to shine towards the end.  But Ms. Méndez doesn’t go more than skin deep in examining these issues in this novel.  Admittedly, weaving in these kind of gender politics might have dragged the main narrative down, but I personally would not have minded if she had explored it more deeply, in the same way that Angie Thomas explored race issues in The Hate U Give.

Overall, this is a great tale of female empowerment and choosing which dreams to follow.  While it takes a few chapters for things to coalesce, when it does this novel is great.  Whether you are in to YA novels or not, I highly recommend this book to you.

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Beautifully Living Between Faith and Science: A Review of Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Contemporary literary fiction is not typically my thing as I find it hard to relate to the plot, characters, and storylines. It also doesn’t help that I have found few very satisfying endings in recent contemporary literary fiction. That said, I was absolutely floored by this book. Ms. Gyasi has written an incredible book about faith, addiction, and grief about an African immigrant family living in the United States.

Set in the present, but also flashing back to the past, this book is told from the first-person perspective of Gifty, a young Ghanaian immigrant to the United States, and her family which includes her mother, father (known as the Chin Chin Man), and her older brother Nana. In the present, Gifty is a neuroscience researcher in California studying addiction in rats, but her story frequently flashes back to her childhood growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, and the evangelical church she and her family grew up in as well as her college days where she first experiences people who do not share her childhood beliefs. If this sounds like another version of the movie “God’s Not Dead,” don’t be afraid. Ms. Gyasi handles Gifty’s struggles over faith and science in an amazing way that doesn’t go for easy answers in favor of one side or the other. As Gifty and her family try to process an unbearable grief, Ms. Gyasi imbues her characters with a great deal of depth, humanity, and compassion. Even the ending, which often gets reduced into head-scratching or saccharine ways in other contemporary literary fiction works I have read, felt perfect for this story. It’s soft, but again does not end in an easy, black-and-white kind of way.

I honestly have nothing against the writing in this book. The characters are great, the story and inner struggles are amazing, and the ending is perfectly soft. Whether you are a fan of contemporary literary fiction or not, I highly recommend this book to you.

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Moving On: A Review of Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of the great tragedies to happen in the midst of the tragedy that was the U.S. Civil War was the death of Pres. Abraham Lincoln's young son Willie in early 1862. Distraught, Pres. Lincoln visits the grave of his son several times in the dead of night not long after the body is interred. Using this, George Saunders spins a ghost story about love and loss and how hard it is for both the living and the dead to move on.

Before you dive into this novel, it is important to note that Mr. Saunders does not follow the typical grammar conventions. For nearly every line of dialogue, rather than the typical "[dialogue]," said Mr. Smith you would find in a typical novel, Mr. Saunders uses citation, almost like what you would see at the end of a block quote in a non-fiction work of history or an academic paper. I found this to be both helpful and confusing. It was helpful because Mr. Saunders uses a large number of characters to narrate throughout, so the citation at the end of each bit of dialogue helped me to keep track of who was speaking at any given time. Mr. Saunders also does quote several memoirs and history books about Lincoln during this time, so the citations helped ground this work of historical fiction in some reality. However, because Mr. Saunders could move rapidly between different characters, this method of narrating could get confusing at times, especially when the action begins to really pick up at the climax.

I used the phrase "ghost story" at the top because the main cast of characters is entirely dead, though many of them either don't know it or refuse to believe it for reasons you have to read the book to understand. The way that the dead interact with the living, or attempt to, is fascinating, though it is unclear how much influence the netherworld has on the living in this book. If anything, the living seems to have a far greater influence on the dead in Saunders' telling. And yet, both sides are trying to figure out how to move on, or whether or not they want to. It's an interesting mediation on loss and grief.

There is much to like and even love in this book. The picture of Lincoln as a man is one of the best I have read outside of my typical history books. For fans of literary fiction, historical fiction, and Abraham Lincoln, I would recommend this read be put on your list. 

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God is Change Visualized: A Review of Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Earlier this year, I read Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and was completely fascinated by this tale of a society that it is beginning to collapse. What struck me even more was how closely it resembled our current times, despite the fact that Ms. Butler wrote this book back in the early 1990s (Check out my review of Parable of the Sower). So, when I learned that this book was being adapted into a graphic novel by the same team that had created Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, I jumped at the chance. And, like that previous adaptation, I was not disappointed.

Damian Duffy and team don't try to reinvent the wheel with this adaptation. Indeed, with the exception of a few minor changes, they stick pretty close to the original story. So, if you have already read Parable of the Sower, you already know what to expect in terms of plot. What is truly joyous to discover in this book is the artwork and how the team integrates and visualizes Ms. Butler's tale. Like their previous adaptation, the team favors a more blocky artwork with dark colors and harsh lines to represent this world falling into chaos. The liberal use of reds, oranges, and black colors works very well to show how the fires, which are both a prevalent threat to the characters and a constant theme in this book, seem to define life in this world. The team also does a good job of pointing out who is who as there are a lot of characters to keep track. Like Kindred, this is a wonderful adaptation of a modern classic.

That said, at times the color palette gets so dark that it is difficult to make out what is going on, especially as events turn violent. This may be a good thing for younger readers, but it does obscure the violence and madness that is prevalent throughout this world. Also, while the team uses text boxes to point out the many different characters, it can still be hard to track who is who as some characters tend to look similar. That said, the most important characters are distinctive enough that it is okay that some of the minor characters tend to look alike.

Whether you have read Parable of the Sower or not, this is an excellent graphic adaptation that lovers of sci-fi, graphic novels, or the works of Octavia Butler should not miss. I would give this a 4.5 out of 5 stars if Goodreads allowed it and I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of the three categories I mentioned.


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It Lives!: A Review of Frankenstein

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Frankenstein was an instant classic when published in 1818 and still holds a hallowed place in world literature. You can't have a serious discussion about scientific advancement in any field today without someone asking, "Are we making a Frankenstein's monster?" It's taken me awhile to get to this book myself, but after finally reading it, I must say that it lives up to the hype.

The novel, which follows the life of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he creates, is good. The basic plot, which you already know, is gripping and Mary Shelley really knew how to write a good sentence. Unlike many other books of 19th century literature, there isn't a whole lot of wasted space and this book is just as quick a read today as any other book of contemporary literature. Indeed, this may be one of the most readable books of classic literature you are likely to find and, I dare say, will still be readable 100 years from now.

That is not to say that this book is completely free of the 19th century tropes that have bogged down other classic literature. There is still the obligatory retelling of the main character's life from their birth to their very death, like with Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, and there is a lot of exposition, particularly when the monster begins to relate his own story. While the language is still very readable, it is still very flowery, with the same long-winded flourishes that you will find in other classic 19th century literature. In spite of that, this is still an incredibly tight story, mostly because of the overall story's shortness. I could imagine this book getting tedious were it 100 or 200 pages longer.

Frankenstein has survived and thrived in our cultural landscape not just because of the thematic elements that still haunt contemporary debates about nature, humanity, and science, but also because it is a darn good book. This is a book that will appeal to science fiction and horror fans, but is also a great seating point for classic literature.

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Love, Death and Other Messy Topics: A Review of The Other Americans

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Life and love are messy and, sometimes, it takes the death of someone close to us to make us understand the beauty in the messiness. In this 2019 finalist for the National Book Award, Ms. Lalami explores themes of life, love, grief, and deferred dreams with a dash of 2019 racial politics thrown in.

Late one evening in the Mojave Desert, a Moroccan immigrant, Driss Guerraoui, is killed in a hit-and-run and his family are left without a father and husband. His daughter, a struggling musician named Nora, returns home to grieve with her family. Jeremy Gorecki, a local sheriff deputy and Iraq War veteran who has had a crush on Nora since high school, strikes up a relationship with her. And an undocumented immigrant, the only witness to Driss' death, weighs whether or not to tell the police what he saw. Other characters tell their own part in the story, including Driss, but to say more would give away to many details and I fear that this description may even give one the impression that this is a mystery or thriller. Although the mystery of Driss' death forms a kind of narrative spine to the novel, this is not a mystery or a thriller. Indeed, the book does not spend much time trying to solve the mystery. Instead, the book focuses mostly on Nora's grief, the growing relationship between Nora and Jeremy, and the complicated feelings Nora has for the rest of her family.

This is a slow novel and I mean that as a compliment. Although the climax of the book comes within the last 50-60 pages and most of the chapters are relatively short, at no point does this book feel rushed. Instead, there is a deliberate pacing where we see things from each of the POV characters' viewpoint. This allows the reader to feel more intimately connected with each character. Indeed, by the end of the novel, I admired almost every character and sympathized with their struggles. If you don't feel anything for these characters, you may need to have a doctor check you for a heart.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this book a full five stars is this one plot point having to do with Driss' recent past. When this piece of information about Driss is revealed about a third of the way through, it hits like a bombshell, exceeded only by the final missing clue from the hit-and-run. It is such a big reveal in such an early part of the book that I thought it would play a bigger role in the overall story and I wouldn't blame anyone else for thinking so. Instead, it is almost completely forgotten within 20-30 pages and doesn't resurface until the very end of the novel. It does fit in with Ms. Lalami's theme about the messiness of love and family, but I felt that it was too big of plot reveal to just leave by the wayside.

Though I am not one who usually reads contemporary fiction, this novel was a pleasure to read from beginning to end. Each character was drawn well and the plot moves at a slow, but deliberate, pace. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good example of contemporary literature done right.

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