Above All

It had been my intention to finish Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles over the weekend, but that was another plan that needed to be abandoned along with several other aspects of my life. On Friday I'd reached the bit where Patroclus is setting out in Achilles's chariot, posing as the great hero. I was pretty close to the end of the novel, but there were enough pages left to make me wonder how Miller was going to continue the narrative after Patroclus's death (he being the narrator), since I was aware, as most reasonably savvy readers would be, that he wasn't going to last more than a handful of pages. I suppose I was as much invested in the fascination of how the writer would solve a major narrative problem as in the fate of a character I'd come to feel close to.

I now know Miller's 'solution', having completed the novel, and it's artistically perfect - clever, yes, but in keeping with the integrity of the text (I'm thinking of Joyce's integritas here) at every level: thematically coherent and true to her characters. And, above all, emotionally devastating. The final paragraph is gorgeous.

It now seems odd that I felt so detached about the novel initially. The writer succeeds in almost every way I can think of, helping us to a deep understanding of the classical world's understanding of ideas of nobility and heroism, reflecting with unerring precision the reality of the brutal violence of that world, and exploring the equally compelling realities of sexual passion and abiding love in all our worlds. Indeed, on closing the novel I couldn't help but think of how much of what we know of humanity in the twenty-first century is strangely reflected in its craftily fashioned pages.