An Apology to Song of Achilles

I finished a book! Never thought I’d utter those words again, at least not without being tied to a chair with my eyes taped open and nothing else to do, but I did it. Song of Achilles, I owe you an apology, an apology for not reading you sooner. If I had known that the words would peel off the pages and waft into my dilated pupils the way it did for every one of the 384 pages, I would’ve picked you up sooner. If I had known that an author could make me see the unseen and pull at my heart strings with each event she danced the protagonists through. If I had known that an unsuspecting love story between two boys, brought together by fate and forced to wrestle against the time period’s norms, would capture me the way it did. If I had known that watching them grow their love only for one to be misled by something as final as prophecy and as trivial as pride, I would have read you sooner.

The story plays with the age-old idea of fate in the form of prophecy, sticking closely to the Iliad the book was reinterpreted from, from a mythical and underlying storyline perspective. But where Madeline Miller places her creative mind on the poem is through the narration of the main character Patroclus, Achilles’s Hetairos. By showing the story through the eyes of Achille’s closest companion, we are able to watch Achilles grow objectively, ups and downs included and at times, even more critically than expected due to their romantic relationship, pitfalls. From glances in the Phthian Castle’s dining hall, to the mountain of Pelion and its rose quartz cave, and to where it all ended, the sands of Troy, readers have the pleasure of watching the two grow a connection seemingly stronger than fate allows, only for it to crumble under selfish, ignorant reasons. Crumble may even be an understatement, but I digress and bar myself from spoiling the book to readers here.

As the first book in this new chapter of my life it may prove hindering, to follow such a book is like filling the shoes of a giant. To the next book, of which I have not chosen, I bid you luck in trying to compare to Madeline Miller’s masterpiece. Each page will be critically read, compared to the work of the first, hopefully sparking that same sense of joy and awe.

I am certain avid readers and wiser minds would tell me that there are many books to read and stories to hear as great as this, while I hope this is true, until then Song of Achilles is on a pedestal far above the rest.