The song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

paperback

English language

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing (NY), Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

ISBN:: 978-1-4088-9138-4

(216 reviews)

This is the story of the seige of Troy from the perspective of Achilles best-friend Patroclus. Although Patroclus is outcast from his home for disappointing his father he manages to be the only mortal who can keep up with the half-God Archilles. Even though many will know the facts behind the story the telling is fresh and engaging.

35 editions

anna_ealasaid reviewed The song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I know it's not important in the scheme of things, but this book changes from past tense to present tense and then back again a couple of time MID PARAGRAPH and I am angry with all the editors and readers and judges to allow such an abomination against the gods to go unnoticed.
I liked some some of the writing and the evocation of the world - esp with Chiron - and thought the Thetis characterisation was interesting. Patroclus was someone to care a bit about in the last quarter, when in the first half I would have abandoned the book as Do Not Care At All About These Boring Horrible People if I hadn't known the story gets good... the idealised Briseis relationship pissed me off so now I'm reading Pat Barker's Silence of the Girls to cleanse from that... But Odysseuss is great - perfect, actually, just like the version of him in my head I've had for twenty years. The Iphigenia episode was really well done - I ended up wanting to read Miller's versions of all the characters except Achilles, who was just this flat absence. It's hard to rate this book, as it has reawakened my late-teens obsession with Greek mythology, which feels like a vast, complex, fucked up but beautiful home to return to. And reasons enough to look forward to reading Circe - but I wouldn't be recommending this one.

Jessica reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This probably isn't a book I would've read on my own but my queer/fantasy book club was reading it so I gave it a whirl and found it enjoyable. It was a quick read and, having not been assigned The Illiad for required reading in school (we read The Odyssey), I realized I wasn't actually that familiar with the source material beyond flashback to the atrocious film Troy.

The love story is the root of everything and it's handled very well. I'm particularly fond of the subtleties in how the characters change over time from their youth into young adulthood and how the main character has to reckon with his love for Achilles even as watches him become someone he probably wouldn't be in love with if he wasn't already.

The sticky wicket for me is, as with any historical story that hews to the brutality of the times, especially one that forefronts cis-masc characters, is having to power through all the violence done to women. It certainly helps that the narrator shows a lot of sympathy and empathy to the women that become pawns in the both the war games of men and the manipulations of gods, but no amount of kind thoughts can make it easy to digest every human female character being raped, enslaved, murdered or, at best, used horribly by the men in the story (when the woman that get impregnated, abandoned and then has her child taken from her has the best fate of any lady in the story, you know things are really bleak). I think the character of Thetis is meant to offset this a bit, but the fact that she is so very inhuman and serves largely as an antagonist, doesn't really balance the scales.

mikerickson reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It was a strange time. Over us, every second, hung the terror of Achilles' destiny, while the murmurs of war among the gods grew louder. But even I could not fill each minute with fear. I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it. In such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom. The days passed, and he lived. The months passed, and I could go a whole day without looking over the precipice of his death. The miracle of a year, then two.

This is some of the most aloof and distant prose I've read in a while, I don't know how else to describe it. I felt like I was getting the story second- or third-hand, which is kind of impressive in its own way considering it's told entirely in first person narration. Just very detached descriptions of the passage of time and entire chapters where there were maybe one or two lines of dialogue. And truthfully, I struggled through the first two thirds of this book because of a lack of interest, but I'm glad I powered through because the ending was satisfying enough that I don't regret giving this book my time.

I picked this one up as a genre palate cleanser to take a break from horror and because it has near-universal praise from my mutuals on here, although I'm left here scratching my head and thinking, "I mean, it was okay." This is definitely more of a retelling of an existing story than an all-out romance, and I don't begrudge the author for not wanting to stray too far from the source material; it'd be stranger if she did. I just did not connect with any of these characters and I didn't even get the sense they connected with each other until very late in the book.

I have a passing interest in Greek mythology so I knew the main story beats to expect going into it. The concept on focusing on a minor character in the Illiad rather than Achilles was interesting in concept, but I felt like Patroclus wasn't given enough agency here to be interesting. It's difficult me to get behind such a passive protagonist, and I'm also not a fan of themes of destiny and fate and honor and glory; there were so many massive egos to navigate around in this book that it was hard to root for anyone. Again, not ragging on the author because that's what Homer told us was happening on those plains in front of Troy, but maybe I'm just too used to modern fiction to get much enjoyment out of this kind of story.

Glad I finally got around to seeing what all the fuss was about, but this would not be a book that would immediately spring to mind if I were asked for historical gay fiction recommendations.

Pip 🍄 reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Simply beautiful

5 stars

Such a beautifully written and captivatingly intimate work. I was so entranced and obsessed, I finished it in two days!

If you're a fan of historical tragic romance -and even if you aren't- this is THE book to read

Max Smooth reviewed La canzone di Achille (Universale Economica Feltrinelli)

Review of 'La canzone di Achille' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

La storia tra Patroclo e Achille, raccontata dal punto di vista del primo e non dell'eroe greco.
Una storia toccante e delicata, con la guerra e i combattimenti in secondo piano, e in primo piano invece i sentimenti di Achille, il più grande tra i greci, e Patroclo, il più grande di animo.
Libro bellissimo, anzi di più.
"Non sono riuscita a far di lui un dio"
"Ma hai fatto lui"

flarion reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song of Achilles' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

It is so pure. The love of Achilles and Patroclus still lingers in my mind! The book really hits deep.

bab reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Favourite book to date

Matto reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The song of Achilles' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

Original approach to this old Greek Myth, easy to read, and a page turner.

WardenRed reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

None

5 stars

Name one hero who was happy.

I'm not sure what possessed me to choose something so overwhelmingly heartbreaking as The Song of Achilles. I just... liked the narrator's voice from the sample and wanted to listen to him read more of Miller's gorgeous prose. …

Name one hero who was happy.

I used to listen to audiobooks quite a lot, but then I fell into the exciting world of fiction podcasts. That sort of ruined audiobooks for me, in a way. I've come to expect a story for my ears to have a full cast, sound effects, all that jazz; not just one or two people reading a book to me. But a lot of all those numerous reading challenges I keep greedily signing up for want me to read an audiobook, so I decided to pick up one. Something I've already read and loved, to listen to a few chapters an evening as a bedtime story.
I'm not sure what possessed me to choose something so overwhelmingly heartbreaking as The Song of Achilles. I just... liked the narrator's voice from the sample and wanted to listen to him read more of Miller's gorgeous prose. For some reason, I completely overlooked what an emotional mess this book had recudes me to the first time around.
Naturally, it did it again.

This was a long listen, really. I kept pausing for days, because I didn't want to get to those last chapters, to the impossibly painful, inevitable conclusion. Not that the early chapters are considerably less painful. I think it's nearly impossible to read TSoA and not be aware that the story is spiralling toward complete and utter heartbreak, even for some reason you know/remember little of Iliad. Even in the early parts where everything is beautiful and nothing immediately hurts, where Patroclus and Achilles are just two boys on Mount Pelion, everything is full of all those hints and remarks full of dramatic irony, like a tragedy should be.
Patroclus, the way Miller writes him, is perhaps one of my favorite characters ever. It's incredible, how he always strives to be the best version of himself among the cruelty and the darkness of the war. How fiercely he loves Achilles, and how he still defies him, calls him out on his shortcomings, his pride, his hubris. How he continues to see the best in him even when that best gets buried under all of the above. How he doesn't hesitate to harm what Achilles has become in order to preserve the best Achilles can be. The ending he faces is inevitable. He still deserves better.

Achilles himself often infuriates me, particularly in the later chapters, but I can't help but hurt for him, too—and not just because my perception of him is filtered through the lens of Patroclus's wholehearted love for the man. It's because behind all the luster and glory, he lives through his own personaly tragedy: a lot of his choices taken from him from a fairly young age, his destiny written for him, culminating in an inescapable death. Patroclus is the only one among those who are constantly by his side who sees him for the man behind the prophecy. For others—his mother, the gods, the entire Greek army—he is a weapon, born for the battlefield alone. His only prize is the legend he makes out of himself; his only legacy is his glory.
Let the story of him to be something more, Patroclus's ghost tells Thetis. And that's what makes this book so important to me, what makes it line up so well with my personal vision of what love should be: seeing the person you love for who they are, and who they can be, and wanting them to be more than what they're allowed to be. Wanting them to be everything.
I love this book, and I kind of hate this book, and I want to promise myself that I'll never subject myself to this story again. I know I will, someday.

Books That Burn reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song of Achilles' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

THE SONG OF ACHILLES is the story of Achilles’s boyhood and (most of) the Trojan War, as told by his lover, Patroclus. Patroclus’ focus is ever on Achilles, for Achilles is Patroclus’ love and it’s so moving to tell this story through the warm glow of that adoration and desire.

I like how it handles the very high number of sexual assaults and consent violations which are, in many ways, the backbone of Greek mythology (or at least the family trees). Just giving proper context to this story and to events in Patroclus' and Achilles' lives requires some discussion of these themes, and I think it did as well as it could without feeling very anachronistic. This is a beautiful retelling of a tragic story, it makes me wish that Achilles, Patroclus, and Breisis could have been happy together, but it wasn't meant to be.

This retelling takes the stance that Achilles was definitely gay, with zero interest in women, and it seems to heavily imply that maybe Patroclus could have been happy with a woman but he has eyes only for Achilles. That does however lead to some interesting story decisions which have to be resolved, given the source material. It keeps one very notable instance of Achilles sleeping with a woman, and artfully dodges another that would be assumed to have happened but technically could be worked around. It did give it a kind of biphobic air to this retelling, like it's working so hard to show the love and devotion between Achilles and Patroclus that it shoves away any hint of intimacy or connection with women on Achilles' part. I'm not a Classics scholar and I don't know if the rejection is part of the myth, it just felt kind of bad in a few places because of it. It ends up working as part of Achilles' slow transformation from a kid who didn't want to hurt anyone into a stubborn asshole who let a lot of people die for his pride, but it did make me dislike him by the end. Patroclus' has a consistently rosy view of Achilles and mourns this change rather than rejecting him for it, which definitely helped me keep caring about the story even as I liked Achilles himself less and less.

I liked it overall and I'm glad I read it, anything that manages to make Achilles feel like slightly less of an asshole than most portrayals of him is doing a great job, and this manages that without stripping away the abrasive parts of his character.

Marcus reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A beautifully written and devastating story.

bee reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

My heart aches and my tears won’t stop pouring. This exceeded my expectations. I was a broken piece of pottery put back together, yet the cracks remain.

& reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

bro..

Aστραίᾱ reviewed The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The song of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

there will be no review, i’m too mentally shattered for this shit

Amy Page reviewed The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Review of 'The Song Of Achilles' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I loved this book more than I thought I would, this might be one of my favorites of the year and actually the most engrossed/unable to stop thinking about it I have been in a while. The narration was really beautiful and made me feel. Kind of got weepy about it near the end (even knowing the story, it still hit me in the heartstrings). Overall would recommend.