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Title: The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth, Andrew Sachs ISBN: 0-7540-8374-8 Publisher: Chivers Audio Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 8 List Price(USD): $69.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Bold Triumph
Comment: Barry Unsworth's imagination has carried him successfully in many directions, as disparate as a Renaissance Italian sculptor's workshop, the deck of Lord Nelson's battleship, the hold of an English slave ship, and the rented villas of contemporary Umbria, but his new setting comes as a surprise.Traversing the plot laid out in Euripides' late masterpiece "Iphigeneia in Aulis," he sets his scene on the vast beach where the Greek armies are prevented from setting sail for the conquest of Troy by a mysterious wind, which apparently can be deflected only by the sacrifice of the daughter of Commander-in-Chief King Agamemnon. Unsworth brilliantly does two things simultaneously. On the one hand, he makes us feel as if we are coming to know people long familiar to us better than ever: now at last we see Menelaus, whose wife Helen has run off with the Trojan Paris, as short, bandy-legged, vulgar, and racist; we see Homer as the man who can shape reputations and is therefore unduly powerful, and perhaps willing to trade on that power, and we see him at a time when he is just falling into his legendary blindness. On the other hand, he turns the fable into a satire on present-day political life with strikingly relevant implications for the second Gulf war. Much of the power, and the humor, derives from the fidelity of Unsworth's details to his historical and literary sources. The wily Odysseus, for instance, inciting another character to one of his schemes, will urge, "Strike while the bronze is hot!" The Songs of the Kings is brilliant and delightful; it should put its author in line for a second Booker Prize.
Rating: 4
Summary: Gangsters and Buffoons
Comment: Critically looked at the Trojan War didn't have much more going for it than the cadences of Homer. "The Iliad," gave us heroes splendid on the battlefield but vainglorious when they weren't plunging dagger and spear into each other fighting a ten year war over adultery. In "The Songs of Kings," Barry Unsworth takes that character defect even further by bringing us charlatans, manipulators, gangsters, and buffoons with only the most humble figure displaying any sign of heroism; and he shows us a war fought for an altogether different kind of booty. It wasn't Helen the Greeks were interested in, it was plunder. Mr. Unsworth has done nothing new, but he's done it quite well. He takes the story of the days prior to the launching of the Greek fleet through a minor character's eyes, and reveals the stories behind the story. He even goes so far as to show us how the official story may have been written with bribes and veiled threats directed toward the press of the day - the poet. Mr. Unsworth moves onto a few patches of thin ice as he injects modern vocabulary like, "collateral damage," into the dialogue, and in modernizing his characters, but all in all the effects work, and though they're never less than jarring they add an interesting dimension in the cumulative. Mr. Unsworth has added well to the literature that has grown out of "The Iliad," and though it's a minor work (especially compared to his magnificent "Sacred Hunger,") it is well worth the read.
Rating: 1
Summary: Horrible book!
Comment: I am sorry I ever read this novel. The story itself is fascinating, but his writing style is awful. The modern language does not fit the story--it's disconcerting. Only a few of the characters are fleshed out, and very few of them are likable. I forced myself to finish this book, because I bought it, and I hoped it might improve by the end. But I was sadly disappointed.
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Title: The Greeks Have a Word for It by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393321487 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Sacred Hunger (Norton Paperback Fiction) by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393311147 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Morality Play by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393315606 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Pascali's Island by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393317218 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393321177 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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