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    Achilles: A Novel
    Achilles: A Novel
    Achilles: A Novel
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    Achilles: A Novel

    By Elizabeth Cook

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This powerful, passionate, and beautifully crafted retelling of the epic tale of Achilles re-creates Homer's fated hero in a new and striking reality. Born of the Sea nymph Thetis by the mortal King Peleus, and hidden as a girl until Odysseus discovers him, Achilles becomes the Greeks' greatest warrior at Troy. Into his story comes a cast of fascinating characters—among them, Hector, Helen, Penthiseleia the Amazon Queen, and the centaur Chiron; and finally John Keats, whose writings form the basis of a meditation on the nature of identity and shared experience.

    An unforgettable and deeply moving work of fiction, Achilles is also an affirmation of the story's enduring power to reach across centuries and cultures to the core of our imagination.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 1, 2003
    ISBN9781466840379
    Achilles: A Novel
    Author

    Elizabeth Cook

    Elizabeth Cook is an author, poet, librettist, and scholar. Born in Gibraltar, she spent her childhood in Nigeria and Dorset. She has been the British Academy Chatterton Lecturer, a Hawthornden Fellow, and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She has written for publications including the London Review of Books, is the editor of the Oxford Authors John Keats and author of the acclaimed novel Achilles (Methuen and Picador USA) which, in a performance version, won a Fringe First at Edinburgh and has been performed at the National Theatre. She wrote the libretto for Francis Grier’s The Passion of Jesus of Nazareth, commissioned and broadcast by the BBC. A new collection of poems, When I Kiss the Sky, is forthcoming. She lives in London.

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    Reviews for Achilles

    3.5/5

    55 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Inconsistent. Some passages are beautifully rendered, but the narrative is quite uneven in others. Beware: style-wise it's neither poetry nor novel but a blend.
    • 3/5
      An evocative retelling of the story of Achilles. It begins with him in Hades then tells his story from birth to death and beyond. The novella was a glorious, intense prose-poem. I especially liked the childhood of Helen; episode of Chiron, the wounded centaur and healer making Achilles' ash spear; and the meeting of Achilles and Priam. I thought any connection of Keats with the story was tenuous at best and did not see why the author even included it. Did I miss something?Recommended but for the Keats episode tacked on.
    • 5/5
      I like this translation of a very old myth. Achilles could be quite arrogant and hard to deal with.
    • 4/5
      A mistake. A moment ago Achilles had needed Odysseus. Now he lets him go, his face dark with scorn.'What's that to me? Don't you know that it's sweeter to be alive - in any shape or form - than lord of all these shadows?'A poetic retelling of the story of Achilles, including his upbringing, the Trojan War, and the meeting between the dead Achilles and Odysseus, who has followed Circe's instructions on how to call the dead to meet with him. I'm not sure why the poet Keats makes an appearance in the final section.
    • 3/5
      Poetic is exactly the word I would use to describe Elizabeth Cook's Achilles - it is very easy to see her background in poetry shining through her words. Cook has boiled down the life of the greatest of Homer's heroes to just over 100 pages, each word and phrase weighted with marvelous spirit and meaning. For the most part, Achilles is a beautifully written and bewitching read. There are however a few pieces of literary oddities. Cook tends to follow a beautiful turn of phrase with vulgarity that spoils the entire thing. Case in point: "Achilles of the loud war cry lets out his war cry...and the Achaeans regroup. Each man of them merry and agile for war.The Trojans shit themselves."I understand what she was trying to do here, but that last bit ruined it for me. The overt crudity in some parts of the story stopped Achilles from being an otherwise seamlessly captivating novella. Luckily there are only a couple of these unsightly blemishes to spoil the story.My other issue with Achilles is that the end is disjointed, jumping from the days of Troy to the time of John Keates. The idea had real possibilities but was poorly executed. The novella went from well-formed to weird in just a turn of the page. If I had it to do over again, I would have simply skipped the last chapter and ended my journey in Troy.My overall impression of Elizabeth Cook's Achilles is that it is an imperfect adaptation of life of Achilles. The writing is dramatic and worthy of the epic, but there are a few choice phrases that come together to really damage the whole. My advice is to read Achilles for Cook's poetic interpretation of the life of Achilles, and try to ignore the offensive parts.

    Book preview

    Achilles - Elizabeth Cook

    The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

    Contents

    Title Page

    Copyright Notice

    Dedication

    Acknowledgments

    Two Rivers

    Two Rivers

    Quicken

    His Girlhood

    The Choice

    Father

    Cut Off

    Gone

    Urn

    Fire

    Vulnerary

    Relay

    Relay

    Glossary of Classical Names

    Praise for Achilles

    Copyright

    for Jonathan Nevitt

    I am very grateful to Greg Hicks. This work might

    not have been completed without his enthusiasm

    for it in its early stages and his readiness to voice

    what had been written and embody it in performance.

    TWO RIVERS

    Two Rivers

    Two rivers. Flowing in contrary directions.

    Two layers of water, each moving steadily, separate and self-possessed.

    It is as if membrane divides them.

    The upper flow, when the sun catches it, is sharp green. Chlorophyll: essence of life. Life teems in this water, gives it its green. Even from a boat you can see the fish streaming through, swift, thick as a rain of arrows. It doesn’t take much to skim some off for a meal which lingers in the smoky, charred bits of flesh and skin that stick to your fingers till you rake at the bits and gnaw them off with your teeth to suck up the last of the salt.

    The other river, which seems to run sluggish against the grain of the swift-flowing, sparkling green, attempting to turn it? What colour is this? Is it no colour? Would it have colour if the sun gashed it? Yes. Then it is sapphire blue; but mostly it appears black.

    Nothing lives in this water. It is anoxic: hostile to life.

    There is a passage of sea where these waters rope together to form a single cable. This cable has carried Odysseus to the edge of Ocean. There was no gainsaying its pull. Hand over fist it dragged the boat on till all at once they reached the place where the waters untwist and drop their cargo. Again the rivers assert their separateness. Only now it is the black that is uppermost. It seems to go on for ever and there is no movement in it. Nothing helps or hinders Odysseus and his men as they row to the shore – a shore not lapped by sea. The water just lies there, pooled like a lake. There is no breath but their own.

    When they step into it, it is as warm as their own blood. So is the air. The exact heat of blood; not a jot hotter or colder. It is dark as an oven. Thick cloud covers the stars (if there are stars and it is night – the men have lost track) and with no sensation of temperature to define them it is hard to know where their bodies begin and end. Some of them slap and rub their hands over themselves for reassurance.

    Another island. Another stop on the journey home.

    Circe told Odysseus to come here, to follow the stream of Ocean till he came to the mouth of Hell; to the rock where two tributaries of Styx meet Acheron. Her instructions were detailed:

    Dig a pit a cubit deep, a cubit wide each way, and fill this tank with drink that will satisfy the dead.

    Milk, honey, wine, water.

    All this is sprinkled with barley which bobs on the surface like scum. Odysseus prays; makes promises to the dead. Tells them what he will do for them when he gets home. When he gets home!

    A ram and a black ewe have travelled with them from Circe’s island, bleating tirelessly all the way but most protestingly just now, being dragged through the tight wood to the clearing.

    First, the ewe.

    Short close hair. Odysseus grasps the folds of flesh above the neck and tugs back her head. The point of his blade is exact. Blood pours from the creature’s throat in a generous arc. The ram rears and bucks. One of Odysseus’ men has to straddle him to hold him down while his throat too is cut. His blood drums into the drink pit like horse piss where it foams and steams.

    Ah! That’s more like it.

    Milk and honey, wine and barley are all very well. They are right and proper. They are due. But they are not what the dead want. Now that the blood is soaking into the earth tank, making a rich mud of the floor, the flavour trickles down into Hades.

    They arrive suddenly. So many of them, jostling and pushing – elbows, knees, necks – forcing their way forward, their mouths leading. Their mouths aflame.

    Only at the very beginning did the living outnumber the dead. Now, as the dead press forward, Odysseus has great difficulty in standing his ground. Circe had told him what would happen. But not what it would be like.

    The sound of them. The sound of dissatisfaction.

    Of layer upon layer of longing.

    Achilles senses Odysseus long before he sees him. He has come up to the mouth of Hell with the others. To his great displeasure he has no choice. He would like to have stayed where he was, in Pluto’s rich labyrinth, remembering life, knowing it in words. He can still speak better than all the rest, now, when he can no longer act and make a difference – not even dent the waters he bathes in. But the smell of the blood in that tank cannot be resisted. The flavour of iron seeps through the earth and the rocks, reaching Achilles and all the other dead. The fine veins that riddle the rocks are filled with it; the rocks themselves are suffused. The longing hooks into his heart and pulls him.

    It is intolerable. He, who has always lived by his own necessity, who had choices and made them. To be dragged, helpless as a fish.

    You would not think him helpless to look at him. He stands apart with Patroclus, his beloved through all eternity, and Patroclus – who loves Achilles but not so much as he is loved – waits for Achilles to move. His deference to Achilles is different from that of the others. They honour and respect him, keep a wise distance, because Achilles was better than all the rest. Better at being human. Fighting, singing, speaking, raging (oh, he is good at that still). Killing. But Patroclus alone is humbled by Achilles’ love. Only a fool thinks that to be more loved than loving gives power. Only a fool vaunts it and displays his own littleness by bragging to his friends and making capricious demands of his lover. Patroclus isn’t a fool. He knows that he is less than Achilles even in this. Humbled by the immensity of Achilles’ love he loves him back with all his large, though lesser, heart.

    The two remain silent, in control of themselves, while the other shades cram themselves in to whatever space they can find near the blood-tank. Like dogs they are; tongues hanging out, oblivious to all but their thirst and whatever blocks their way. Achilles cannot see what it is. Is that Tiresias’ voice? The pitch of the man-woman; not a chord but a harmonic in which treble and bass combine and are distinct. Only Tiresias whacks out the words in that insistant, circling rhythm, like a whirlwind whipping through trees in a grove, circling and beating, then

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