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Title: Achilles: A Novel by Elizabeth Cook ISBN: 0-312-31110-9 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.1 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: What It Means To Be Mortal
Comment: Although the dust jacket identifies "Achilles" as a novel, make no mistake about it -- this is poetry, even if it happens to look like prose on the page. (Interestingly, "A Novel" does not appear on the title page or anywhere else -- perhaps this was just wishful thinking by a publisher scared of marketing the book as poetry.) The spare, concentrated language, the interwoven images of water, fire and blood, the recurring themes of mortality and immortality -- life, death and something in between -- all are masterfully handled in this brief but deep book.
Although Achilles' life and death provide the framework for much of the book, in some ways he remains always apart from us. In the underworld he is different from the other dead, just as in life he was different from other mortals. Perhaps his choice, to die young but with a name that will live forever, sets him apart (undying, like the figures on Keats' Grecian urn). We know Achilles' actions, but we seldom see into him in the way that we see into the other characters -- Peleus, Thetis, Priam, Helen, Chiron. Cook is nothing short of brilliant in taking us into the hearts and minds of these "subsidiary" characters. Thetis' grief at the funeral of Achilles and Helen's lonely life are particularly harrowingly drawn.
As others have noted, the concluding transition to Keats is initially disconcerting, but as I ponder on it, I see more layers on which it works for me. As demonstrated by the subject-matter of many of his poems, Keats was drawn to the classical past, and to the question of immortality -- what is it that endures? Truth, beauty, art, a life that embodies those qualities -- whatever you call it, this book is one that will endure in my mind.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Dream of Achilles
Comment: Elizabeth Cook is a wonderfully poetic writer who gives us a dream of Achilles from conception to death. Her prose and imagery are lush and held me spellbound; but, when the dream shifted, as dreams do, and brought Keats into the story she lost me completely. Until its final chapter "Achilles" is matchless in its illumination of "The Illiad," and its retelling of the myths that surround Achilles' life. The book is so good it could easily stand next to Homer as a necessary and thrilling supplement. And then for some reason, the author subverts the logic of her storytelling with an imaginative stumble. A shame, and her editor more than shares the blame. Even so, read this book and enjoy its success, and consider the last chapter optional.
Rating: 3
Summary: An imperfectly realized vision.
Comment: I would most certainly not describe this book as a historical 'novel' as other reviewers have. It is a kind of short story ' actually more like a sequence of episodes cast with a poetic hand. And it is not strictly a retelling of Achilles story ' Cook offers us a highly selective and even eccentric conception of Achilles. She gives us an Achilles who will be unfamiliar to many readers of the poem, for Cook's Achilles is sapped of much of the mettle and psychological consistency with which Homer endowed him.
If you believe like me that the Iliad is all about the education of Achilles, then you may have trouble with Cook's interpretation. She seems to miss the entire point of the story. And don't just take my word for this. When Priam begs Acilles for the return of Hector's body, Cook has Achilles respond as follows: 'It's Zeus' wish that I give you the body and that's why you'll get it.''
If you believe this, then you have to believe that Homer wrote a story about nothing. This meeting is the crux of the Iliad. It constitutes one of the most poignant moments in the entire corpus of western literature. Yet here Achilles' decision to return Hector's body is reduced to a reflex action dictated by a god. In truth, Achilles returns the body (and disdains the gifts of Priam, though bizarrely Cooks has him pawing through them and picking out the softest robe) because he ALONE among the Greeks has finally come to an understanding of the cost of war, and the meaningless of trophies. It took the death of his friend to do it (a death that he comes to see was a direct consequence of his own pride). Achilles grew as a person -- a fact Cook seems to have missed altogether.
There are false notes here as well which undermine Cooks' credibility with the reader. For example, at one point she refers to Hera as 'Juno' -- this is the Roman name for Hera. This isn't poetic license, this is an error of the first magnitude and there are more where this came from.
Cook is also wilfully crude; one of the other reviewers euphemistically characterised these elements as 'adult'. The appearance of these terms is so crude and so repugnant that it has the effect of wrenching the reader from the narrative flow. The point is that Cook perhaps wants to give her writing an edge. Well, there are better ways.
However, this is not a bad book; it is filled with beautiful, poetic passages. Such as this one:
'Hector's feet are sure'.As he runs he remembers each part of his life: the bushes and rocks of his boyhood hideouts'the routes of his hunting'the waterfall he led Asytanax' first bathing'.the shallow rock pools where the women did the laundry before the war. He remembers, his life spread out before him like a giant sheet in the sun'..'
I was very moved by this. And you won't find anything like this in Homer. But you know what? You won't find it for a reason. Have you EVER been scared? I mean scared for your life? Terrified that you were about to die? I have. I spent years rock climbing and got into some very compromising situations. And let me tell you, in moments like these you are not dreamily recalling episodes from your past. Every fibre of your being is striving to keep you alive. Your higher intellectual functions shut down, your autonomic nervous functions take over, you become animalistic. Homer knew that. Hector had a killer bearing down on him -- Achilles was never more than a few footsteps behind him. Hector would have probably heard his laboured breath and felt his presence. He would have known the certainty of his approaching death. Believe me, he wasn't thinking of women doing laundry or Asytanax' first bath.
And so this leads to my final judgement on this book. You may enjoy it. You may be touched from time to time. Impressed here and there by a particularly well turned phrase. However, at its bottom, the problem with this book is that it is an imperfectly realised conceit. Men, particularly men at war, simply do not act or think the way Cook imagines that they do. But if you are a fanatic like I am, you will want this book in your collection.
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