Micro Review 10 (2024) Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

 

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Penguin Books)

As I started reading the books for the Debut Fiction Prize so late I was aware that this was the overall winner as I started it, and as I've enjoyed all the books so far (and one is one of my top reads of the year) this one had an awful lot to live up to.

Again on paper the book was right up my street:

An exhilarating, fiercely original story of brotherhood, war and art, and of daring to dream of something bigger than ourselves.

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected, and hanging on by the slimmest of threads.

Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. When they take to visiting the nearby quarry, they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives.

And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry.

But as the audacity of their enterprise dawns on them, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between enemies and friends. As the performance draws near, the men will find their courage tested in ways they could never have imagined...

The author is also based in Norwich so another tick in its favour...

Sadly the book wasn't quite my cup of tea, I had hoped that it was just the abridged Book at Bedtime version that wasn't for me and that the full book would connect.

I can't quite put my finger on why the book didn't work for me. The story was interesting, I knew both Euripides plays being performed and the characters/setting were strong. I also quite liked the way the characters spoke in a vernacular way, it just left me cold and I didn't find it either a comedy or a tragedy.

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the discussions where the winner was chosen to find out why this one won - it was good but just not a winner in my mind.

Micro Review 25

 

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (Wildfire Books)

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I've long loved tales from Ancient Greece, I think that my love stems right back to early primary school where we first looked at this history and especially to my Usborne Guide to Ancient Greece. I was lucky in that family holidays took us to Greece, and it is a place Mr Norfolkbookworm and I continue to visit (when we are allowed to) and also where we got married.

Retellings of the Greek myths from new view points have become really popular in the past decade and I very much like this new genre. 

In Ariadne Saint retells all of the tales connected to this Cretan princess but from her view point, and that of her sister Phaedra, not from the more traditional male narrated format.

I knew most of the stories that link together to form Ariadne's life but for some reason I hadn't joined them together to make a continuous arc, so to read the tales all linked together was really enjoyable. The tables weren't turned to the extent that Ariadne and her sister became flawless, and the male characters didn't all become cardboard cutout baddies - everyone had shades to their lives. The writing was such that I really did have a movie playing in my mind as I read the book, and I could feel the Greek heat as I turned the pages.

The portrayal of the Greek Gods in this version of the myths was fascinating to read, their jealousy and pettiness made them seem far more human than godlike and as a result even more terrifying in some ways. It also made me reassess my mental image of Dionysus - he really doesn't bear much resemblance to the Disney version from Fantasia in this novel!

It took me a couple of goes to get into the book initially, but that was definitely down to my mood and not the book. This debut novel is a great addition to similar works from Madeline Miller, Pat Barker and Natalie Haynes and I am looking forward to reading more from all 4 authors!

Many thanks to Net Galley for the advance copy, even if I didn't read it until publication day!

Talking Books: The Children of Jocasta

The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes.

I think my love of Greece and all things Greek shines through on this blog, from reworkings of the myths and legends through to seeing plays from millennia ago in the original language! I've been looking forward to this book since last November when Natalie Haynes spoke about it at the Heffer's Classics Forum.

This is Haynes' reworking of the stories behind the plays Oedipus Tyrannos and Antigone but focuses her dual time line on two female characters who feature almost as throwaway lines.

At the very start I was a little unsure about the book, I couldn't place where the prologue fitted in to the tale at all and this confused me but once the story proper started with chapters alternating between generations I was hooked completely and stayed up far too late reading the book because I just couldn't put it down.

The characters were hugely realistic and vivid while the prose and descriptions really brought to life how the Hellenes lived. I've visited the ruins in Greece and know how the palaces work in theory but this book really made the stones I've visited into a living place

I knew the rough outlines of the stories behind the novel but Haynes used her knowledge of all versions of the stories to weave a brilliant tale that made me think about all the ideas I held about the characters and to think about the tales from a female point of view.

I think that this book would be just as enjoyable if you don't know much about the original stories/plays and that Haynes adds to them rather than anything else, I now want to search out Sophocles' other Oedipus play and also the mentions of him in Homer's Odyssey - oh and Anouilh's version of Antigone...

Classical thinking in Heffers

Heffers Classics Forum, Cambridge. October 2016.

Last year there was no Classics Forum and I have to say I missed it, the chance to sit and listen to some of the finest Classics scholars talking about either their latest research or their newest book is always stimulating.

This year we were at a more central venue with good tea/coffee on tap and in a room where the acoustics were good and the temperature just right - even with the Zumba class above us at one point!

Like previous years the format was nice and simple, 4 sessions each with three speakers who spoke on their topics for roughly 20 minutes. This set up is ideal because if the topic doesn't interest you then there it will only last a few minutes - I hasten to add that this year all of the topics appealed and I could have listened to most of the speakers for a lot longer than their allotted times.

Highlights for me included the talk from Tim Whitmarsh on atheism in the Ancient World and Gideon Nisbet's Confessions of a Translator.  I also greatly enjoyed Jerry Toner's talk all about how to Release Your Inner Roman - I'm so pleased to see that Marcus Sidonius Falx is still sharing his guide to how to live and prosper in Ancient Rome.

The balloon debate just after lunch was also great - 5 academics presented a case for why they thought that 'their' classical work should be preserved over the others - the idea being that they are all in a balloon that is crashing and all are tossed over board and lost forever to ensure the balloon keeps flying.  Julius Ceasar's Gallic Wars, Sophocles' Antigone, Martial's Epigrams, Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Sophocles' Philoctetes went head to head but this time Edith Hall's persuasive arguments for Antigone won the day. My vote went for Martial - if only one book is going to survive then I want it to be funny!

I've come home with a stack of new books and lots of thoughts running around my head - a great day.