Thank You, Torro!

I read a book recommendation on my mate Torro Spyker´s blog The Bullring a few weeks ago. It was for the novel The Song of Achilles by the young American author Madeline Miller.

After reading Torro´s praise I immediately went to Amazon´s website and ordered the book. I got it a week ago but didn't start reading it until on Monday. And once I started I was captured by the wonderful story.

It is a rare experience for me these days to come across a novel that draws me in to the story in the way that this novel does. It is especially rare when I already know the basic story, in this case Homer´s renowned Iliad.

However, Madeline Miller succeeds in very convincingly recreating the ancient times when the Greek gods and demigods and the centaurs, amazons and sea-nymphs still walked on earth and interacted with humans. The novel depicts the lifelong love story of the hero of the Trojan wars Achilles and his lover Patroclus, from the time when they first meet as youths until their deaths and - believe it or not - even a bit after that.

Please don´t pay any attention to the publishers trying to stress how "sexy" it is - sex sells they say - but in this case it is a gross exaggeration. The sex in the novel is negligible and not at all as embarrassing as it sometime can be in bestsellers.

I thought the best way I could thank Torro for sharing this novel with me was to "pay it forward" and tell you all to read it.