Bummers! Greek bummers! Ancient Greek bummers! And, as any scholar of the classics will tell you, that’s the worst kind of bummer.

Trash! Utter trash! Compelling trash! And that’s the worst kind of trash.

Madeline Miller’s ‘The song of Achilles’ is so shockingly bad that at several points I had to wonder if it was some sort of satire, parody or just the result of a bet. For instance, a young man’s sexual awakening is celebrated with a spot of self-pollution in a grove of trees, after which he discovers a fallen branch and decides to fashion it in to a present for his mate. That’s right, he gets wood, and he wants to give his wood to his special friend, after polishing it for a while.

The first half of the book is a love story. Prince Achilles is half god, half human and all hero-in-waiting. He befriends the narrator, the exiled, ex-Prince, Patroclus, and the kids bond, literally. It’s all rather sweet, bashful gazes across the dinner table, assistance with a fig-juggling practice, harp lessons and then straight to the bedchamber. Of course, Achilles’s sea-nymph mother is disapproving of Achilles friendship with Patroclus. Possibly because he’s a bloke, more likely because he’s mortal.

Mediterranean metaphors, not all as subtle as the woody one, abound. Skin at night is as dark as olive, kisses are sweet as figs, jizz is as white as sand on a moonlit beach, that sort of thing. It’s all very romantic. And restrained. As soon as the boys put their hands show more below the belt, the action stops. Like in boxing.

The prose style is spartan. After all, these are fighters, as well as lovers. Even when they lounge in an olive grove, spitting seed at one another, they do so in short sentences.

The second half of the book is a war story, specifically, some of the siege of Troy.

In the end, this is a tragic (Greek tragedy, and that’s the worst kind of tragedy) fable about celebrity. Achilles may be a god, but his ego is monsterous. He knows he’s good, he wants to be great, he wants to be a legend. From birth he has been fated to be history’s greatest warrior, this knowledge is both spur and burden and he is portrayed as a doomed rock-star demi-god of war with the looks to match.

The book deals with the mythic aspects of ancient Greece in the time of gods and heroes in a fascinatingly straightforward fashion. Gods exist, as do mythical beasts like centaurs. These are not, however, beings encountered in everyday life and those who meet with heroes and demi-gods are overawed, like modern mortals meeting A list celebrities. Petroclus, the most mortal of narrators, effectively conveys the strangeness of this world of gods, magic, warfare and privilege, our guide to an enchanted, dangerous world.

The whole thing is essentially like an extended answer to the question ‘what would the story of Achilles be like if it was reported in today’s tabloid press and celebrity magazines? The love and the war, the huge egos, the beauty and the predictions are given a tabloidesque telling, where short sentences suit.

Maybe that’s what’s so compelling. The war is reported in an immediate fashion, a clash not just of mighty muscles but mighty egos. And then there’s the question, is a woman really worth all this? The ten year siege, the murder and mayhem, the looting and the bloody, bloody warfare. Even with Achilles doing what he was born to do, cutting a bloody swath through the foe, there’s noting heroic about the gore-soaked figure who returns to his tent every evening.

Ultimately, this is a book about destiny, running from it, fulfilling it. All Achilles cares about, Petroclus apart, is poets writing about him, potters making vases about him.

It’s all about fame and celebrity.

So, trash.

But…

Full disclosure, if I had a spare five minutes, I would find myself reaching for the book, eager to see what happened next and, on a train journey, so engrossed was I that on one occasion, I almost missed my stop. Engrossed in utter trash, but engrossed all the same.

“IN THE DARKNESS, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

(The last sentence of the book, almost the only good one.)

I was expecting to re-learn my Greek classics, told with a modern voice in modern language. I expected tales of heroism, of the great Greek heroes like Odysseus, of the Trojan war.

What I got was a pale romance, lots of pathos and characters I couldn’t care for at all. Achilles almost always submits to his mother’s wishes, Patroclus is annoying and whiny and both fall in love with each other for no discernible reason whatsoever - unless you count Achilles’s feet...

“His dusty feet scuffed against the flagstones as he ate. They were not cracked and callused as mine were, but pink and sweetly brown beneath the dirt.”

Or Achilles’s feet... Again...

“Up close, his feet looked almost unearthly: the perfectly formed pads of the toes, the tendons that flickered like lyre strings. The heels were callused white over pink from going everywhere barefoot. His father made him rub them with oils that smelled of sandalwood and pomegranate.”

Yes, feet and lots of them...

Everything else takes a backseat compared to the romance parts which simply bored me almost enough to put this thing away for good.

Because, honestly, I don’t like nonsense like this:

“As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did show more not plan to live after he was gone.”

And whenever something threatens to happen in this book, e. g. for pretty much the first time after 50% (!) of the entire book...

“The drums began to beat, and the oars lifted and fell, taking us to Troy.”

… the chapter ends and the next one starts...

“BUT FIRST, TO AULIS.”

… with more stalling. The story never stands a chance against Miller’s prose, it drowns before ever flourishing. It almost feels like Miller is doing it on purpose and mocking us:

“It was easy, in those moments, to forget that the war had not yet really begun.”

Because we can’t ever forget that STILL NOTHING HAPPENED. Even the rare fighting scenes are incredibly boring and full of... feet!

“I could not even see the ugliness of the deaths anymore, the brains, the shattered bones that later I would wash from my skin and hair. All I saw was his beauty, his singing limbs, the quick flickering of his feet.”

And what do we get at the end about the legendary Trojan War?

“THE PROPHECY TOLD TRULY. Now that Pyrrhus has come, Troy falls. He does not do it alone, of course. There is the horse, and Odysseus’ plan, and a whole army besides.”

Wow. Just wow. How do you get to write so incredibly boring and be celebrated for it?!

I’m certainly not going to waste more time on Miller’s books.

A beautiful retelling of the story of Achilles and Patroclus. I meet books like this one and wish I had read them some years ago as a teenager when the little I read of queerness was of eternal condemnation in religious education books but here I am and I guess that we met after all is most important.

Madeline Miller tells the story from Patroculus' point of view with a lyrical simplicity that wrings the heart. From their meeting to the end, I traveled with the lovers through ancient Greece to Troy. I appreciate the simple yet thorough storytelling Miller took with the book so that even those that may not have read or are not familiar with this story or the characters are not lost.

Miller, Madeline. The Song of Achilles. Bloomsbury, 2011.

I am a sucker for any retelling of a Homer that brings new insight into his epic stories and characters. Anyone reading The Iliad wonders at times about the awkward triangle of Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis. Achilles goes on strike when Briseis is taken from him, and he goes back to war in a rage when Patroclus is killed. Homer gives us little insight into either of Achilles’s companions. Telling the story from Patroclus’s point of view gives Madeline Miller a chance to flesh out all three characters. The Song of Achilles presents Achilles first as a boy with a weak father and a mother, who as a goddess sets impossible standards for him. He is a draft dodger hanging out with his boyfriend when he is dragged to Troy where semi-divine skills as a killer will be appreciated and allowed to flourish. In the end, he learns what every Greek hero learns, that the Gods always stack the deck against us. Patroclus is an older boy exiled into Achilles’s household after he accidently kills another well-connected boy. Tradition says that Patroclus is a kind of surrogate elder brother and the dominant figure in their sexual relationship though he is subordinate in rank and reputation. But that is not the way Miller tells it. For her, Patroclus is a hero-worshiping little brother who is much more emotionally open than Achilles and not a dominant figure in their romantic relationship. Miller must make the character of show more Briseis almost out of whole cloth. She is a war captive given to Achilles as a prize. Living in the tent with Achilles and Patroclus, she falls in love with Patroclus and offers him a chance to envision himself as a heterosexual husband and father. The choice is analogous to the choice between long life and fame that Thetis gives her son Achilles. In the end, both men make the same choice. Achilles becomes the absent father of Pyrrhus, a heartless, vengeful killer, and Patroclus dies, as Homer tells us, wearing Achilles’s armor.