The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller’s Orange Prize winning novel is both a love story and a war story. And whoever said 'all's fair in love and war' couldn't have come up with a better story to illustrate the point, complicated as it is by the hand of fate and the capriciousness of the gods.
    While this is definitely the story of Achilles - immortalised by Homer as the greatest Greek warrior of his day and a key figure in the war the Greeks waged on Troy - the story is told from the point of view of Patroclus and includes a fascinating retelling of the lengthy siege the Greeks inflicted on Troy.

    You will remember it all began when Helen was abducted by Paris; she was his prize for choosing Aphrodite in a beauty contest. Helen was the ‘face that launched a thousand ships’ as well we know, and they were Greek warships brought from numerous Greek kingdoms, all converging on Troy to regain not only Helen for her husband Menelaus, but to defend Greek honour and teach the Trojans a lesson.
    At first I had to get over my recollections of the movie Troy which cast Brad Pitt as Achilles - an alpha male Holywood idol kind of Achilles. Miller’s Achilles is not like that. With the goddess, Thetis, for a mother, this hero has amazing fighting skills that always find their mark. But he's also sensitive and musical and his unusual golden hair and green eyes give him an ethereal beauty. She takes us back to Achilles' youth and the development of his love for Patroclus, his boyhood friend and lover, which plays an important part in his fate at Troy.

    Patroclus has had a difficult start in life. He is a disappointment to his father and when he accidentally kills another boy, is exiled to Phthia where its king, Peleus, fosters a number of boys, one of whom will eventually be chosen as companion for his son, Achilles. Surprisingly to everyone, Achilles chooses Patroclus. When Patroclus joins Achilles for lessons with the centaur Chiron, he begins to get over his inferiority complex and develops skills of his own.
    The two become inseparable, but when the war on Troy is declared, Achilles, in spite of Thetis' efforts to hide him, must muster an army from Phthia and join the fleet. Patroclus of course goes with him. Achilles lives under the curse of all that makes him great and his fate, as written by the gods, cannot be avoided.
    Miller is a classical scholar and has done her research to make this so much more than a sword and sandals drama. The relationship Patroclus has with Achilles is tender and makes the story poignant and real. She does wonders showing how the efforts of man to create his own destiny are in constant battle with the whims of the gods, which may have seemed strained and artificial in less skilled hands. The power play that develops between Achilles and Menelaus' brother, Agamemnon, who is proud and cruel, makes the story hum along.
    You can see the lasting appeal of these classical stories written so long ago by Homer and others such as Virgil and Aeschylus. There is plenty of fodder here for some more classical adaptations - the genial but wily Odysseus, for instance, would make a terrific subject for another book, to say nothing of what happens next to the family of Agamemnon.
    In the acknowledgements, Miller states that this novel has been a work in progress for ten years. I sincerely hope that she has learned to speed up the process, because I would love to see some more of these stories brought to life as she has so vividly with The Song of Achilles. This is a haunting story that will stay with this reader for a long time.

Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd

It's a few more months before Robert Goddard's third book in his James Maxted trilogy comes out, and fancying some period spy drama I couldn't resist picking up Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd. And it certainly didn't disappoint when it came to page-turning action.
    Lysander Rief is an actor - with a name like that what else would he be? - and we first encounter him on his way to an appointment with a psychologist to discuss a problem of a sexual nature. This is 1913 in Vienna, a city Freud has put on the map for the development of psychoanalysis. In the waiting room Rief meets Hetty Bull, a compelling young English sculptor, and his life is never the same again. Rief manages to solve one problem, but it is soon replaced by another.
    When Rief finds himself under arrest, he turns for help to Alwyn Monro, another client of Rief's analyst. Munro happens to work at the British consulate and manages to help Rief get home safely but at a price. Back in Blighty, Rief takes up his acting profession again, but World War One gives him a chance to pay back that debt that has been hanging over his head since Vienna.
    With his excellent French and German - Rief's mother is Austrian - and his ability to assume a role and dramatically change his appearance, Rief is ideal for a spot of espionage when secret information about troop and supply movements at the front is being passed to the Germans. He must make contact with the known receiver of the stolen information and somehow extract the key to the code from him. He does this with a novel method that might well put you off visiting your dentist.
    But that is only half the problem; back in England, someone is sending the information on, classified information that only high-ranking officers have access to. Fortunately for the reader Rief is soon installed in The Directorate of Movements on some pretext or other and gets to finish the job off.
    There's a lot going on in Rief's personal life as well. He has been engaged to lovely fellow actor, Blanche, but he can't forget Hetty and suddenly his current leading lady has begun to give him the come-hither look. All in all there is certainly plenty happening in the plot to keep the reader amused. Add to that the atmosphere of pre-war Vienna and mid-war England, the theatre set and tea and biscuits in the war office and you can certainly feel transported to another time and place.
    And if Rief isn't particularly likeable - he's foolish with women, and has got away with things that he should feel well ashamed of - he's interesting fodder from a psychological point of view. His very faults are what give the story a bit of heft and allow for fate to play with him - a little like his Shakespearean namesake. In the end Rief gets the job done and manages to select the woman he wants to spend his life with, but will he really be happy?
    Boyd has made a name for himself as a top-notch storyteller with even a James Bond title to his name. This is the first William Boyd novel that I have read and it is certainly diverting enough in that classic style of storytelling - a modern John Buchan perhaps. I'm still looking forward to the new James Maxted book though.
 
 

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

A Spool of Blue Thread is the story of the Whitshank family, and to begin with it is mostly about Abby Whitshank and her husband Red in the later stages of their marriage. Abby has become confused, sometimes wandering off and forgetting why, so it's time for the younger Whitshank members to return to the well-proportioned house their grandfather built to discuss their parents' future.
    It is an awkward gathering, particularly when it is suggested that Red and Abby might be happier in some kind of retirement home. We already know that Red is the stubborn one, and still turning up at the family building business every day, he isn't likely to accept change easily. Abby is the opposite, an overly caring mother, with a habit of bringing home waifs and strays connected with her social work. But even Abby doesn't see the need for any fuss.
    They have raised four children, no-nonsense Amanda with her sharp business suits, Jeannie who works for the company business along with younger brother Stem who has taken on its management and is so much like Red in many ways. Which is a little strange because Stem is adopted, while Denny, two years older, drifts from job to job and never manages to keep a relationship. He disappears for months and sometimes years without anyone knowing where he is. The story of Stem's adoption is quite heart-breaking but also reveals what an incredible softy Abby is.
   The baggage which is hinted at between Stem and Denny is a story slowly unravelled, like the blue thread of the title. There is also the story of how Abby fell for Red  that creeps in towards the end of the book, and after that the peculiar courtship of Red's parents Junior and Linnie Mae. The blue thread is subtly there in odd corners - the blue of the shirt that Abby makes Red for their wedding, also the colour Linnie Mae requests for the porch swing of the Whitshank family home.
    There are enough disturbing secrets and revelations to keep the reader interested in the plot of the novel. But what Tyler is so wonderful at is the way she describes families. I found I could relate to events she describes, and even her characters sometimes reminded me of my own family members in a different country and hemisphere. It seems families are alike the world over. And like many families, the Whitshanks have come through some difficult times, but Tyler leaves us with the hopefulness of new beginnings and the promise of continuing generations.
    Throughout the novel there is the humour of Tyler's dialogue and her talent for capturing characters through tone of voice and idioms: Red's 'What the hell!' rejoinders; Linnie Mae's mispronunciations that indicate her humble origins. It is altogether a rich tapestry of American and family life, and another classic from the author of favourites like The Accidental Tourist and Searching for Caleb.

Night Train to Jamalpur by Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin might well have called this novel 'Snakes on a Train'. His railway detective, Jim Stringer, has been sent to Calcutta  to investigate corruption and security arrangements on the East Indian Railway. It is 1923 and with Lydia and their sixteen year old daughter Bernadette in tow, his secondment was supposed to be a kind of working holiday.
    But someone has been secreting venomous snakes in first class carriages and the body count begins to climb. Jim feels that this should be something he could look into, and of course he does, hampered as he is by fellow investigator, the cigar smoking and monstrously rude, Major Fisher. The two are on the night train of the title, when a murder takes place - Jim rudely awakened by sounds outside his compartment and then gunshot.
    The Anglo Indian, John Young, with whom Stringer had been chatting and sharing an evening drink just hours before, is found dead while horsemen ride off into the night. It is difficult to suggest a motive for the killing unless Jim himself is the target, a means of stalling any investigations into railway corruption.
    And Jim can only wonder who has stolen the folder of potentially damning information that had arrived on his desk the day before. If only he'd had the chance to read it first. Jim is inclined to suspect Fisher, who is uncooperative and who he believes is carrying a gun, which for some reason fails to appear when their carriage is searched by police.
    If that isn't enough to be going on with, Jim begins to worry that his daughter Bernadette is about to be swept off her feet by the son of a Maharajah, known to the family as the RK. On top of this Bernadette is out almost every night dancing with her posher pals and spending small fortunes on hats. Meanwhile Jim's wife, Lydia, is eager to spread the word about the women's movement in India at a time when revolution is in the air. But Jim worries that there is something else niggling her.
    Jim's investigations take him from balls held by Anglo high society and golfing with the RK to clandestine meetings with snake charmers. There is a host of potential suspects, most of them peculiar in some way - the strangely faceless William Asquith in charge of the traffic department who spends more than he could possible earn,  his subordinate Dougie Poole, who has a brilliant mind hidden by his tendency to be off his face most of the time, as well as Professor Hedley Fleming who knows an inordinate amount about snakes, to name but three.
    While this novel isn't as pacy as some Jim Stringer novels, there is a lot going on and enough action to keep the reader well amused. And laced through everything is Jim's knack for wry observations and local colour. The India situation in itself is interesting, with whisperings about that upstart, Gandhi while Lydia has plenty to say about British colonial domination.
    Night Train to Jamalpur is the last in the Jim Stringer series to date, its author seemingly beavering away on other projects. We've seen Jim delve into all manner of cases in a range of interesting settings. Will there be more in the series? I certainly hope so as this is probably my favourite current mystery series - where it doesn't really matter 'whodunit', as the story is all in the telling. Which is just as it should be.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Lila is the third novel in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead trilogy, the first of which tells the story of John Ames, an elderly minister who is writing his family story for his young son. He has married for the second time late in life and he may not live long enough to see his son grow up.
    Lila is his wife's story. Told from Lila's point of view, it is at times a harrowing tale, but also one of those stories where the human spirit triumphs over adversity, which Lila experiences in spades.
    Lila is a neglected child, rescued if you can call it that, some would say kidnapped, by a passing drifter. Doll lives a hand-to-mouth existence, moving from town to town and picking up odd jobs. She has a scarred face and is illiterate, but no one can doubt her love and devotion to Lila. The two make a strong bond, but times become tough indeed when the 1930s Dust Bowl hits. They team up with a family driven off their farm and the group pool their resources, though Doll and Lila are barely tolerated.
    I have never read a novel where I recall such vividly recounted poverty - a lack of food and shelter experienced by ordinary folk who are just trying to get by. But somehow the two pull through and Doll even manages to stay in one place long enough for Lila to get a smattering of education. We learn that Lila is surprisingly bright, but fear drives them on again, Doll always looking over her shoulder and hiding her distinctive face in the shadows.
    These early years in Lila's story are recalled in flashbacks. Now a mature young woman, perhaps in her thirties, though this is never clear, Lila has made her way to the town of Gilead and meets Reverend John Ames. The two strike up a friendship and share interesting discussions about God and his purpose.  Lila helps herself to a bible from the church and alights on the grimmer texts from the Old Testament which resonate with her own struggles. She completely lacks what you might call social graces, but her intelligence and questioning nature have Rev. Ames scratching his head.
    Robinson is writer who stands out for her empathy and her ability to create an extraordinary character who has been through so much and who can think so deeply about it all. The love story that underpins the plot is delicately done, running parallel to the story of Lila's past, it all coming seamlessly together. She is also wonderful at creating a sense of time and place, the small town of Gilead, the Dirty Thirties, rural life in Iowa. It reminded me a little of Harper Lee, and Steinbeck with a hint of Pygmalion.
    For a book that really makes you think, Lila is also a pleasure to read, and I shall be hunting out the previous books in the trilogy, both of which have won literary awards. No surprises there!

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Station Eleven is one of the more original novels I've read in some time. It describes a world where a deadly flu virus has killed more than ninety-nine per cent of the Earth's population. But this isn't a simple dystopian/survival novel, although it has elements of that. It's also somewhat 'six degrees of separation' as it follows the lives of several people caught up in events on the last day before the flu wreaked havoc.
    And it all begins on stage at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto with the Act Four death of Arthur Leander due to cardiac arrest. Although Arthur will not be around for the 'end of the world as we know it' that follows, he is the character that connects the others, one way or another.
    Leaping on stage to give CPR, is Jeevan Chaudhary, a trainee paramedic. Jeevan was at one time a paparazzo who stalked Leander, one of the most celebrated actors of his day and with a gossip-worthy social life. It is through Jeevan, that the reader gets to take in the dawning horror of the pandemic, the panic hoarding of groceries, the final decision to abandon the city in an attempt to survive.
    Also on stage is child actor, Kirsten Raymonde, who is still playing Shakespeare twenty years later with a travelling orchestra. The world has altered enormously, people preferring to live in small settlements, some ruled by fear or menace, to protect themselves from marauding bandits. The players are armed with crossbows and Kirsten carries several knives at her belt, which she has learned to throw with deadly accuracy.
    The novel switches back and forth between the nail-biting future and a more decadent past, centred on our famous actor, introducing more characters who will somehow play a role in what transpires later on. One of these is Arthur's first wife, Miranda, who works for a shipping company, and spends her free hours creating a richly imagined alternative world called Station Eleven, in the form of intricately drawn graphic novels.
     Kirsten has a couple of copies, much read and dog-eared, to go with her small collection of memorabilia - the press cuttings featuring Leander, and the snow-globe she has carried in her backpack since that fateful night in Toronto. But she isn't the only one who harkens back to the past. The players find Shakespeare relevant to the new world they finds themselves in, and their motto: Survival is Insufficient, is a quotation from Star Trek.
    The story moves on in this zig-zag manner throwing up more connections between the characters as the orchestra, escaping from a cult leader and his team of thugs, converges on a disused airport. This is the home to one of the larger communities of survivors, and here Mandel has created a brilliantly atmospheric setting. It is good to know that if you find yourself in an airport when civilisation comes to an end, there is a lot of useful stuff on hand.
    Station Eleven is a wonderful book in which you can completely immerse yourself, combining the page-turning action of a survival story with complex characters and thoughts on nostalgia and celebrity culture. It is, not surprisingly, another of the novels I have read recently that have made the long-list of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - the short-list will be announced in a few days.

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

Pym is often described as a 20th century Jane Austen. Perhaps this is more obvious in Jane and Prudence as the eponymous Jane sees herself as a bit of matchmaker. Although she doesn't quite get into as much trouble as Austen's Emma does, and as Pym puts it when describing the modern novel, the ending is not obviously a happy one, with a number of possibilities still on the table.
    The story begins with Jane and Prudence, who were at university together, at an Oxford reunion. Here their old tutor, Miss Birkenshaw, remarks about what her students have gone on to achieve. A number, like Jane, have married clergymen, others have their work in a ministry or have dogs, while a question mark hovers Prudence. Jane feels Miss Birkenshaw might have said that Prudence has her love affairs.
    As she and her husband settle into a new parish, Jane begins to look around for a suitable husband for Prudence, now twenty-nine - an age when she could so easily miss the marriage boat altogether.
    Prudence meanwhile lives in a tastefully decorated flat in London, where she works as an assistant for a Dr Grampion, editing books 'nobody could be expected to read'. She has secretly been in love with her employer who one evening when they were working late, had laid a hand on hers and said, 'Ah, Prudence.'
    Pym creates amusing little scenes around Prudence's workplace, where the older ladies, Miss Clothier and Miss Trapnell, fuss about whether the typists will manage to bring in the tea on time, or if Mr Manifold can be prevailed upon to share some of his tin of Nescafe when the tea has run out. This is the early fifties and rationing is still the bane of everyone's existence.
    Similarly in Jane's village, there is always the worry of what to have for dinner, Jane usually relying on opening a tin, but rescued by the wonderful Mrs Glaze, the housekeeper whose nephew is the village butcher. Mrs Glaze consequently knows whose turn it is for liver, and who will be having 'a casserole of hearts' that evening.
    The scene is set for plenty of humour as Jane lines up potential candidates for when Prudence comes to stay, lured by a fundraising whist drive. The most obvious seems to be the recently widowed Fabian Driver, who has had a few love affairs himself but has a nice house on the green. There is also young Mr Oliver who looks palely interesting when reading the lesson, and the local MP, Edward Lyall. So many possibilities.
    It could all be a bit silly if it weren't for Pym's wit and the lively dialogue that captures the time; the daft preoccupations of parish life, starkly contrasting with quotations from Jane's academic speciality: the poetry of the seventeenth century.  Contrast gives the book a bit of oomph in many ways - the two main characters, one from the town and one from the country - and the contrast between people's expectations and what transpires. Jane and Prudence is a delightful read, redolent with subtle wisdom, that will leave you in a better place.