Madeline Miller is my favorite author, and she‘s good at modernizing mythologies, especially the Greek one.
Since I read one of her books, Circe, I couldn‘t help but fall in love with her books. And this one, Song of Achilles, will break your heart into a million pieces while reading. The story goes dramatic as two boys grow up together and realize that their love for each other is more than brotherly love. This relationship rattles in a never-ending war and a thousand emotions tied with each passing chapter of the book.
If I choose one character for romantic novels in Greek mythology, Achilles would be the last one to choose. We have such renowned lovers in the myth, including Orpheus, Eros, and even Paris, who triggered the war, which is the background event of this book. But the author sees something else in the myth, and she found something in our famous warrior Achilles. He returned to the war only for his friend Patroclus.
Compared to the U.S., to be honest, South Korea is not an open place for LGBTQ+ people. It‘s very common here in the U.S. to let others know about your pronoun, and it‘s not rare to see LGBTQ+ couples. There are always opposers, but it sometimes feels even weird to see that even the liberal media in Korea don‘t really shed light on the issue. I‘m curious about what holds the public conversation itself.
We can surely learn that all hearts beat the same through the book, nothing but love matters, love between the souls, love that is more a language of spirits than bodies. Love that is far beyond the boundaries of gender, age or even a prophecy made by the Gods.
