Achilles remains a godlike figure to Patroclus: "Then I turned to look at him. The story is told from the perspective of Patroclus who, exiled by his father to live in the court of Peleus, soon falls in love with his host's son, the superhuman Achilles: from childhood, his demi-god status means he is swifter, more beautiful and more skilled than all his peers.Īstonishingly to Patroclus's eyes, Achilles returns his love, and the two boys grow into adulthood and a love affair. Homer sets all this out in the opening line of The Iliad: "Sing, muse, of the wrath of Achilles." Even after death, his ghost still thirsts for blood, and Polyxena, a Trojan princess, has to be sacrificed at his tomb before the Greeks can sail home from Troy.īut in her novel, The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller has found the lover beneath the bloodshed and fury. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER-NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, The Washington Post, People, Time, Amazon, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Newsweek, the A.V.His revenge on Hector was merciless: not only did he kill the bulwark of Troy, he dishonoured the corpse, dragging Hector's body around the city three times. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.īut there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians.
Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power-the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. But Circe is a strange child-not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. "A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller is "both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times).
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