Poetry of Reading

This book is a beautiful, poignant retelling of one of the most ancient and enduring stories of all time. The tragic events that have haunted and thrilled us for generations are brought brilliantly to life under the skilled hand of Adèle Geras, and made fresh by an interesting new perspective. The story is romantic and utterly exquisite, the language poetic and lovely but easy to understand. The new, non-Iliad characters in the novel are servants, and all of them are lower in class than the heroic royal characters that we usually associate with Troy. This puts them in a prime position to witness important events and interact with all the tragedy’s important characters without interfering with the normal flow of events. The traditional characters, both the gods and the humans, are for once in the background, but they are still highly important and we explore their personalities.

As for the novel itself, it is nicely balanced and layered. The story takes place during the war, but it is not essentially about the war, but rather about the experiences of the young people who are living in Troy during the war. What you can expect is a novel about the nature of the human soul, and how both love and war can warp and change it.

In this last installment, Ms. Godbersen does the remarkable: she allows her characters to achieve a sense of maturity without being preachy or giving them fairy tale endings. The book is filled with fashion and romance, betrayal and reconciliation, and it could not have been a more fitting ending to this series.