Baby Spart(an) Do Do Do Do Do Do - The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with the Iliad because it’s been out a while, so, Spoilers, I guess?

The Song of Achilles is a retelling, one which takes the myth and runs with it. Here Achilles really is the son of a sea nymph, he is trained by a centaur, and gods play their part in the lives of man.

I used to know my Classics a lot better that I do now - Roger Lancelyn Green’s books were a staple of my childhood library - so this was a book which unfolded for me. I remembered each plot point as we hit it, so I’m entirely the wrong person to ask if it makes any logical sense. It probably doesn’t. It certainly could have done a better job of selling ancient motivations to a modern audience.

The story is told by Patroclus, a prince and, when he begins this story, unlikely candidate for Helen’s hand in marriage. I am super here for a room full of men deciding what will happen to a teenage girl, as you can imagine. This is a male story, though, and Miller doesn’t attempt to change that.

However, when Patroclus inadvertently kills another boy, he is exiled to the court of Peleus where he falls swooningly in love with Mary Sue Achilles, who’s super perfect at everything (as one expects from a demi-god). Thetis, Achilles’ mother, really hates Patroclus. The boys go off to learn things on a mountain. They are swoonily swoony. They come back. Thetis hates Patroclus. Then she hides Achilles because she doesn’t want him to go to Troy as he will be killed.

Once the war actually begins, a good half way through the book, things improve, in part because there’s actually things happening. There is air of inexorability to the whole thing which really gets into its stride in the last third as we make the drive towards what is fated to happen (and we’re no longer reading rambling scenes about how swoony teenage Achilles is).

When Miller hits the predetermined narrative events, she’s good. When she’s making her own way between, she’s… less good.

For a book which treats the gods as real, there’s an awful lot of “something’s happening because the gods are displeased” conversations, followed by “here’s the solution to that” conversations. Obviously there’s no one correct version of many of the myths, but sometimes Miller takes the path of most boredom, such as the demand for the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Apollo’s appearance on the walls of Troy especially charmed me, so the omission of the gods involvement in other ways, even as a background, felt disappointing.

I am also critical of the characterisation. Odysseus is great, true, but everybody else? Eh.

Achilles lives his whole life chained to the prophecies made about him, but whatever this does to him remains unexplored. He’s just some guy. Admittedly one who is super good at everything and jolly good looking. And when we’re reading the narrative of a boy, then man, who is in love with him, I’d really have preferred to grasp the appeal.

Thetis is especially poorly done. Like her son she is chained to the pronouncements of the Fates, but here she is a pure JustNoMil. She’s such a central figure in the original myth - the Trojan war begins because of a prophecy made about her: the son of Thetis will be greater than his father, hence “marriage” to Peleus, hence somebody not doing the invitations right, hence golden apple etc etc etc

I was also unreasonably annoyed that Miller chooses to not use the one thing everybody knows about our demi-god: that he really should have invested in some foot armour. Google assures me Homer doesn’t include the story of Thetis’s attempt to make her son invulnerable and immortal, but Homer doesn’t include Achilles’ death, either. Or the romantic relationship between him and Patroclus. It felt like a massive oversight rather than a deliberate decision.

The beginning was interesting if not grippy. Then it got a bit dull. Then a bit duller. Then, by the end, it was very good indeed. I don’t rule out reading Circe, Miller’s second full length novel, but I could just as easily not. Overall?

3 stars

There’s no point in separating the reviews for these three - Call the Midwife Omnibus by Jennifer Worth

You may have heard, only very vaguely mind, of this show on BBC1 on Sunday nights. It’s set in 50’s London, in the east end, and is about a cabal of nuns who train a gang of young women to rip 9 month-old fetuses from the wombs of the desperately poor. It was based on a series of books, Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End. Because I am lazy, I’ll be offering a very vague review which covers all three books.

Basically, it’s like the TV series but with more words.

Call The Midwife covers Jenny Lee’s entry to Poplar and her early days as a midwife. Shadows of the Workhouse is largely concerned with stories from the community, about the poverty and deprivation which existed in the first half of the century. Farewell to the East End concentrates on the cases attended by Worth’s co-workers, Trixie, Chummy and Cynthia.

There was less focus on midwifery than I expected but Worth is a good writer who can tell an engaging tale in a largely non judgemental way - the worst I could say of her is that she thinks like somebody born before the war. She represents the time and the struggles well but keeps a veil drawn across her own life and her own circumstances. I think there are questions to be asked about the morality of profiting from stories which don’t belong to you, but I recognise that without Worth, they would have been lost: the people whose stories she tells have nobody else.

I enjoyed the third book the most, coincidentally the first of the three I read. It focussed on the midwifery and took a more technical approach to things. I’ve yet to find anybody willing to impregnate me, so I had little appreciation for quite how much goes on as one attempts to extract life from one’s vagina - let me tell you, it is fascinating.

The books don’t quite have that terrific mix of edge and cosy the TV show has, but the bones are here. Chummy, Trixie et al are not significant side characters in the way Siegfried and Tristan are in James Herriot’s memoirs, and there’s no overarching “story”, so those hoping for an expansion on the show - in the way books often are to their screen counterparts - will leave disappointed.

I liked them, but I didn’t love them. There’s honestly not much to pick one over the other, so don’t be afeered to start out of order, there’s no story arc here. They were interesting, though, and with me that counts for a lot.

3.5 stars

That's one word for them - Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Rachel Chu is about to spend her first summer in Singapore in the company of her loving boyfriend, Nick. While there, she will attend his best friend’s wedding (which she doesn’t yet realise is the society ticket of the century) and meet his family (who, she doesn’t yet realise, are the possessors of most of Asia’s wealth). Nothing here could possibly go wrong.

So, the problem I had with this book is that it has a premise, not a story. Chinese American girl is going to find out her boyfriend is from an uber rich family. So, where’s the conflict? You’ll have to wait for the end of the book for that to be introduced. Oh, we try, with some boring meangirl antics (because Nick is a very eligible bachelor indeed), but it’s never a battle and it’s never entertaining. Something is done to Rachel. Something else is done to Rachel. We’re supposed to be on her side, I guess, she is the everygirl whose terrific fortune we wish could be ours. She and Nick were dull, two dimensional, and I didn’t find them believable to root for.

I couldn’t buy Nick’s naivete, his surprise that he might need to prepare Rachel for the extent of his family’s wealth, or the circles they move in. I couldn’t buy Rachel’s surprise, either. She’s supposed to be have brought up in a slightly hand-to-mouth fashion, her mother having cash-in-hand jobs at Chinese Restaurants and frequently moving. Are you seriously expecting me to buy that she didn’t notice Nick’s obliviousness to the stresses and strains of normal life? That he, brought up in a world of Balliol college, private chefs, and hundred thousand dollar outfits, could pass for a normal income person?

The story also follows Nick’s mother Eleanor - who has no intention of letting her son be hitched to an mainland China born nobody - and Nick’s cousin Astrid - who’s developing concerns about what her husband may be getting up to on his business trips.

I liked Astrid, very much. Eagerness to get back to her story got me through the early stages of the book, but towards the end her story feels too rapidly wrapped up. We’re told early on in the book what will happen with her husband but the way it gets there is terribly put together.

Eleanor’s story is a mixed bag. The account of her life and her set make for a far more interesting backdrop than Rachel’s hotel suites and island resorts, but her rather predictable quest to find some dirt on the potential daughter-in-law is enlivened by what she finds out.

I can see this has the bones to be really good film but on paper everything is too thin, the writing too janky, and the main characters too tepid to be really good. That said, it was very enjoyable in part because it’s so different to a lot of what I’ve read. It’s unapologetically trashy and I liked that. While I’d certainly read Kwan’s other books, it would be from the library rather than a purchase.

3.5 stars

What's big and green and slightly annoying? - Watermelon by Marian Keyes

Looking at the scores I tend to give Marian Keyes, one could be forgiven for thinking I didn’t like her books very much. Actually, I do. I like her very much. In times of crisis, when my head is elsewhere and things are (hopefully metaphorically) on fire, I reach for Keyes. Ditto Sophie Kinsella. I have the same problem with The Hunger Games books - I didn’t rate them terribly highly but I’ve read them in hardcopy and audiobook form half-a-dozen times. So, although I must have read this several times over the last few years, I’ve never written a review of it.

Claire Walsh has had an eventful day. Not only has she given birth to her first child, her husband has up and left her for the downstairs neighbour. So, in full Scarlett O’Hara mode, she heads home to Tar- to Dublin, baby in tow. Shenanigans ensue.

Watermelon was Keyes debut, first published in 1995 - the year Bridget Jones’ Diary was first published in the Independent - before chick lit was even a thing. I’m not sure who actually bears the credit for inventing the genre, but there’s probably a good case to be made for this book being one of the first. Some staples of the genre are here: the chatty style, the smexy good times, the young lady getting her fella, but not the shopping, hateful office job and drinking culture which would come with Keye’s second novel.

Keye’s major strength is her writing style (which also extends to her Twitter account.). She’s got this pleasing, humorous intimacy, exactly like your best mate is relating what’s gone on with her recently (presuming your best mate is really good at telling a story). And Keyes is also brilliant at the supporting characters - Helen Walsh is a legend who only gets greater with each Walsh family novel while Mammy Walsh has her title written on her soul.

However, Keye’s writing has certainly got better over the years.

Too often the prose is broken down.

And let me tell you, it’s pretty tiresome.

It makes it look as though the formatting on my kindle has met with a hideous accident.

I’m not a fan.

And then there’s Adam, hunky love interest. The development of his relationship with Claire is … troublesome. Claire, as might be expected for a woman who’s been hit with the “I don’t love you and I’ve already moved my clothes into the new apartment I’m sharing with Nice Denise” bombshell by her husband a few hours after dropping their sprog, finds it difficult to trust Adam. When he takes longer than expected to buy a cup of coffee, she becomes convinced he’s legged it and makes preparations to leave only for him to reappear and begin acting as though she’s spat in that beverage he’s clutching. What an insult! That she could think he’d do that! What kind of terrible person is she, to think something like that about him? It could be lifted straight from a book about a woman in an abusive relationship and made me want to tell him to get in the fucking sea.

More generally things feel convenient in the way of a novel - Claire can’t sleep so she cycles madly for nights and gets her figure back super fast, that sort of thing.

The main flaw is the one I have with all my least favourite Keye’s novels - the heroine has no direction. Claire has this terrible thing happen to her and this is the story of how she copes with it, but she’s not actively doing anything except getting through the days. It’s the same problem I have with Angels, and The Woman Who Stole My Life. Although they’re entertaining enough, they lack the drive (and subsequently the stakes) of her best work: Rachel’s Holiday. Claire has no fail state to avoid.

If you’ve never read Keyes, do yourself a favour and don’t start here, but if you enjoy her it’s worth picking up. It shows the promise of what Keyes would go on to become: a really good writer who is worth reading even at her weakest. And a really good place to go when everything has gone horribly wrong.

3 Stars