Angieville

I'm still struggling to believe this moment is actually here. It was almost exactly three years ago that I read and reviewed Madeline Miller 's stunning The Song of Achilles and essentially dissolved into a puddle of shock and awe. It was difficult to summon the will to move on in the wake of such a book. The crafting of it felt almost too good for this world, as though it had been created slightly above mortal ground and continued to hover there, just above us, in its natural state. So when I got wind that Ms. Miller was working on a new novel—that not only was she shifting from The Iliad to  The Odyssey, but that she was focusing the tale on Circe—it was difficult not to will Chronos to speed up time so that I could have that book in my hands. To say that it was one of—if not the —most anticipated novel of the year for me is not any kind of exaggeration. When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother an...

I'm a bit giddy just typing this. Emily Wilson—a professor of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania—has become the first woman to translate Homer's  The Odyssey into English, and I can hardly wait to get my hands on a copy. This article in The New York Times is well worth a read, if you (like me) are interested in all things Penelope, Odysseus, and grey-eyed Athena. Just take a look at the opening lines of Wilson's translation: Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God's cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginn...

I've been sitting on a review of The Song of Achilles for some time now. And it's simply another case of me worrying I won't do justice not just to the book, but to (perhaps even more importantly) my feelings for the book. I was attempting to do just that a number of nights ago with a friend, and wound up choked up and slipping the tears from my eyes as I touched on a scene of inevitable sorrow. My emotions continue to ride ever so close to the surface with this book, with Patroclus and Achilles. I stayed away from Madeline Miller 's debut novel for awhile for several reasons, among them my fear of said sorrow as well as the usual concern when one comes to a retelling of characters and stories one loves. But eventually that cover — the gold foil, you guys, the glorious gold foil — and the parade of ecstatic reviews got to me enough that I grabbed a copy the next time I was at the library and settled down that night to see. Patroclus has always led the uneasiest ...