Three
hefty bits of fiction this week, published between 1847 and this year, but I’ll
take them in reverse chronological order of their stories.
Gone Girl by
Gillian Flynn – I don’t know what to tell you. Read it. There, done. I mean, I
could get into the plot some (woman goes missing on her 5th
anniversary, husband is confounded and suspected, things happen) but really, it
all unfolds so grippingly that I wouldn’t want to give a bit of it away in
advance. What I will tell you is that Flynn knows her characters inside out, more
thoroughly than most any author I can think of, and it is wonderful. And
terrifying, because everyone is flawed, Flynn’s characters perhaps more than
others. I listened to this book, narrated by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heywood,
and you know, normally I listen to books while I do stuff – chores, work,
exercise, whatever. But this, I was often enough just sitting, rapt. Or pacing,
to better concentrate and absorb and anticipate and fret. Whelan was smooth as
butter, which fit the character to a tee, and Heywood, oh - there was such a
landscape in his narration. This was my second Flynn novel, and I found after
the previous (Sharp Objects) that I needed a little recovery time before
starting this, but I am unable to stay away from her. Her writing has become a
serious, dangerous addiction.
My little
palate cleanser after Gone Girl was Charlotte Brontë’s
Jane Eyre, which I hadn’t read since high school. I had the mistaken impression
that I didn’t really care for it, that it was too gothic and silly and
melodramatic for me. Well, maybe it had been, at one point (there is a madwoman
in the attic, after all), but that would have been when I was stupid. Now that
I’m smart, I love it. “Reader, I forgave him….” Oh, I was in tears. (Okay, I
cry all the dang time at books. One of these days I’ll be crying over something
in real life, and my family will just not blink, because they’ll assume my head
is, again, as always, in a book or a movie. But these tears were realer than
the rest! They were Velveteen Rabbit tears!) Anyway, I had forgotten large
swathes of this novel – all of her school years, much of what brought Jane and
Mr. Rochester together to start with, the annoying neighbors. (Mad women in
attics and a little bit of transcendental communication will knock other
details right out of the mind.) And I don’t think I’d ever noticed just how
awesome a female Jane Eyre is. She’s far more the arbiter of her own fate than
I’d realized, and I delighted in getting to know her strength and intelligence
and morality. And the humor between her and Rochester! Such fun. I’m very glad
I gave this another chance. (Now, will I do the same for Wuthering Heights?
Reader, stay tuned!)
Madeline
Miller’s debut, The Song of Achilles, is more a fleshing out of the lives of
Achilles and Patroclus than a
retelling of the Iliad, though of course the Trojan War comprises a great deal
of the novel. We meet Patroclus, the narrator, when he is five and first
encounters the depth of his father’s disapproval of him and the height of
golden potential that is the five-year-old Achilles. Patroclus spends a few
dismal years disappointing his kingly father before being disowned and sent off
to foster with Achilles’s father, King Peleus.
It takes time for the resentful and jealous boy to make peace with the glory
that is Achilles, but soon they are intimate friends. The sea goddess Thetis
is Achilles’s mother, and she is not best pleased that her son has taken an
ugly mortal as his boon companion. The whole ‘mom’s disapproval of teenage son’s
friendships only brings them closer’ thing is clearly at play here, and
Achilles will not be separated, even when Thetis sends him off to be educated
by the centaur Chiron.
It turns into a golden idyll for the young men, and the exploration of their
physical love for each other. Then Helen is kidnapped, and Greece goes to war
against Troy. Fate sends Achilles to battle, to wrestle with his
destiny and prophesized death, and Patroclus remains at his side. What I loved
about this book – the reverting of Achilles from legendary warrior to sweet
kid, the view of him through the eyes of a loving friend who doesn’t love war,
the easy prose. My husband (who teaches the Iliad) snorted at the ‘they were
lovers’ angle, but for us modern mortals who don’t ‘get’ godly motivations as
well as the ancients did, adding the upset and jealous mom to Thetis’s
relationship with both men was interesting, and effective. Note to self:
approve of my kid’s romantic choices, or risk his rebellion.
