Last spring I listened to The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (read by Frazer Douglas) and was enchanted. Normally I delete the books I listen to once I’m done. I just can’t bear to let this one go. I know I’ll listen again. I’m a classics junkie–I studied Greek and Roman history, literature, and art in college and was one of those kids who thought the Greek and Roman myths were the best stories ever told. Miller’s retelling of the story of Achilles and Patroclus had me riveted from beginning to end. When I had the chance last week to hear Miller speak at the Center for Fiction in NY not even Achilles’ scary goddess mother Thetis could have kept me from going. I had the chance to ask a question about how she managed to create such a frightening character as Thetis and also to tell her how much I enjoyed the book.
Miller retells the story from Patroclus’ point of view and in her hands it becomes a heartbreaking love story. Knowing how it ends doesn’t at all detract from the beguiling pleasures of the trip. Miller takes the mythological and Homeric material and shapes it to her own ends. The way she gives personality and motivation to characters like Thetis, Chiron and Briseis, for example, only heightens the tension of her narrative.
At the Center for Fiction, Miller talked about the process of writing the novel, how she “set the moment of Patroclus’ death on my horizon and wrote toward it.” She spoke about some of the decisions she struggled with: whether to include the gods and how to end the novel after Patroclus’ death. She talked about how “generous” the Homeric material is, how much it gives a writer to work with and how she often returned to the Iliad for inspiration.
In the first chapter of The Song of Achilles, Patroclus, then a young boy, is sent off to a gathering of the Greek kings, where Helen is asked to choose a husband. One of the kings, as yet unidentified, begins to speak. Listening to it, I gasped in recognition: the speaker was Odysseus, there was no doubt. At that point I knew I was in for a great listening experience. Miller told me that she’s working on a novel about Odysseus; I’ll be watching for it.
Just a note about the audio version–it was wonderful. The reader, Frazer Douglas, creates voices and personalities for all the characters. His tour de force is Thetis, Achilles’ mother, a minor goddess. Even a minor goddess is terrifying to mortals, and Douglas had me scared each time the angry and vengeful Thetis appeared. I’m not quite sure how he did it, but I was truly frightened. At the Center for Fiction, Miller talked about the power of the gods, how encountering a god was never a good thing for a mortal and how she tried to write that into Thetis’ character. After her talk, I told her that I thought she’d be happy with the way Douglas portrayed Thetis.
A Reader's Place 