Why I Read This Book
So,
a few months back I was browsing through a used book store, and I stumbled upon
Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s Alexander the Great trilogy. I had never heard of Manfredi or this trilogy
before. But I thought: “Well, it’s high
time I read up on Alexander the Great, and I like historical fiction, so why
not?” So I bought Manfredi’s Alexander
the Great trilogy, and read and reviewed all - three - books on this blog.
But as
I was reading Manfredi’s trilogy, I looked up a few reviews on-line, and there
were several indications that I was reading the wrong trilogy. Many people mentioned Mary Renault’s
Alexander the Great trilogy as the gold standard against which Manfredi’s
trilogy failed to measure up against. For example Game of Thrones author G.R.R. Martin,
wrote: It takes a certain amount of hubris for any novelist to tackle the life of Alexander the Great, knowing that his efforts will inevitably be compared to Mary Renault’s classic and enduring treatment of the same materials, but that is just what the Italian historian, archeologist, and jouralist Valerio Massimo Manfredi has done....If it fails to match the power and the poetry of Renault’s, well… very little does.
Or
several Amazon.com reviewers, who also unfavorably compared Manfredi's trilogy to Mary Renault. To take just a couple examples: The writing was entirely lacking in any sort of poeticism or complexity, especially when compared to the Alexander Trilogy by Mary Renault.
Or
I question the need for any new history of Alexander that cannot improve upon Mary Renault's, and this one definitely does not fit the bill.
Or
"Alexander, Child of a Dream", while a nice a nice collection of facts and anecdotes, does not have the magic to carry beyond the ordinary. There are several books on Alexander the Great by Mary Renault I would not hesitate to recommend.
(Those three quotes are just examples. If you go to the Amazon site for Manfredi's book (A), just about every reviewer is invoking Mary Renault.)
Or
"Alexander, Child of a Dream", while a nice a nice collection of facts and anecdotes, does not have the magic to carry beyond the ordinary. There are several books on Alexander the Great by Mary Renault I would not hesitate to recommend.
(Those three quotes are just examples. If you go to the Amazon site for Manfredi's book (A), just about every reviewer is invoking Mary Renault.)
And if all that wasn't enough to kindle my interest, then there was this Guardian article on Mary Renault's Alexander the Great trilogy that I stumbled across:
They're superb books, there's huge scope for discussion in Renault's presentation of the politics and personalities around her famous hero, there's much to say about her interweaving of myth and history
and
just as significantly, the cover of my new copies of the Alexander The Great Trilogy also carry quotes from Hilary Mantel ("Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers") and Sarah Waters (who calls The Persian Boy "one of the greatest historical novels ever written"). Based on those two quotes alone, it could be argued that Renault has changed the face of modern literary fiction (and most definitely of the Booker prize).
With my interest officially kindled, I
resolved that when I was back in the United States over Christmas, I would
track down a copy of Mary Renault’s Alexander the Great trilogy. Which I did.
And here I am reviewing the first book.
Alexander the Great Overkill?
For anyone keeping track of my reading list, I suppose the obvious question is: "Isn't this a little bit much on Alexander the Great now?" After all, I've just finished one trilogy on Alexander the Great, plus Philip Freeman's biography of Alexander the Great (which I read to supplement the historical fiction), and now I'm embarking on another trilogy."Aren't you getting a little sick of Alexander the Great?" someone might ask me.
And the honest answer is: yeah, a little bit. But after seeing Mary Renault's trilogy so highly praised, I decided I had to give it a try. Plus, another reason I wanted to read Mary Renault's trilogy is because the last book in the trilogy, Funeral Games, tackles something neither Freeman nor Manfredi cover: the descent of Alexander the Great's empire into warring factions following Alexander's death. And I'm really looking forward to learning more about that period.
However I'm not up to Funeral Games yet, and this first book in the trilogy, covering Alexander's boyhood up to his father's assassination, is material I've already seen covered by Manfredi and Freeman. It's slightly boring to retread it again, but at the same time, it's also kind of fun to see a different spin that a different author puts on the same events. And that, after all, is the fun of historical fiction. So on the whole, I'd say I'm still enjoying myself with Alexander the Great reading.
The Review
One of the reviewers I quoted above already mentions this, but Mary Renault does write in a very poetical way at times.
Not all the time. There are sections of the book where the drama is pushed forward by sparse narration. But there are a lot of other descriptions in this book that are perhaps more poetical than prose.
Readers will probably differ in how much they appreciate these poetical descriptions. For my part, I admit to struggling with them a bit. But no doubt this will differ from reader to reader, so I'll quote a typical long descriptive section of the book (something that I struggled to keep focused on), and you can decide for yourself how appealing this prose sounds to you.
The mild summer day declined to evening. On the salt lake of Pella fell the shadow of its island fort, where the treasury and the dungeons were. Lamps glimmered in windows up and down the town; a household slave came out with a resined torch, to kindle the great cressets upheld by seated lions at the foot of the Palace steps. The lowing of homebound cattle sounded in the plains; in the mountains, which turned towards Pella their shadowed eastern faces, far-distant watch fires sparked the grey.
The boy sat on the Palace roof, looking down at the town, the lagoon, and the little fisher-boats making for their moorings. It was his bedtime, and he was keeping out of his nurse's way till he had seen his mother, who might give him leave to stay up. Men mending the roof had gone home, without removing their ladders. It was a chance not to be wasted.
He sat on the tiles of Pentelic marble, shipped in by King Archelaos; the gutter under his thighs, between his knees an antefix in the shape of a gorgon's head, the paint faded by weather. Grasping the snaky hair, he was outstaring the long drop, defying its earth-daimons. Going back he would have to to look down; they must be settled with beforehand.
Soon they gave in, as such creatures did when challenged. He ate the stale bread he had stolen instead of supper. It would have been hot posset, flavored with honey and wine; the smell had been tempting, but at supper one was caught for bed. Nothing could be had for nothing.
A bleat sounded from below. They had brought the black goat, it must be nearly time. Better now not to ask beforehand. Once he was there, she would not send him away.
He picked his way down the long spaces of the ladder-rungs made for men. The beaten earth-daimons kept their distance; he sang himself a song of victory. From the lower roof to the ground; no one was there but a few tired slaves going off duty. Indoors Hellanike would be searching; he must go around outside. He was getting too much for her; he had heard his mother say so. (p.33-34)
....et cetera. To be fair, not all of the passages are quite that slow moving. (Mary Renault can also speed up the action when she wants to). But a fair amount of the prose is like this.
Of course some people will love those descriptive passages. (In fact, based on all the high praise this book has gotten, it's fair to say many people have really loved those descriptive passages.) So although they tried my patience at times, perhaps that's my fault and not the book's. Perhaps I was just not the ideal reader for this book.
The other big negative for me was there was way too much focus in this book on Alexander's relationship with Hephaistion.
Some historical context is perhaps in order here. According to Wikipedia, Mary Renault was one of the first 20th century writers to write sympathetically about romantic love between two men, and this made her a popular figure in the emerging gay rights movement in the 1970s. (Fire from Heaven, although not the only work of Mary Renault to deal with love between men, was written in 1969, so you can imagine it was pretty far ahead of its time back then.)
However, those of us with a low tolerance for mushy romance, whether it be homosexual or heterosexual, will find all the scenes of Alexander and Hephaistion gazing into each other's eyes a little bit tiring.
To quote from one of them:
He looked deep into Hephaistion's eyes, as always before a confidence. As always, Hephaistion felt as if his midriff were melting. As always, it was some moments before he could follow what he was being told.
"...who were in other cities and escaped the siege, have been begging Father to have Stagira restored and the citizens enfranchised. That's what this Aristotle wants. What Father wants, is an alliance with Hermeias. It's a piece of horse-trading. Leoidas came for politics, too. Old Phoinix is the only one who came for me."
Hephaistion tightened his arm. His feelings were confused; he wanted to grasp till Alexander's very bones were somehow engulfed within himself, but knew this to be wicked and mad; he would kill anyone who harmed a hair of his head.
"They don't know I've seen this. I just say Yes, Father. I've not even told my mother. I want to make my own mind up when I've seen the man, and do what I think good without anyone knowing why. This is only between us two. My mother is entirely against philosophy."
Hephaistion was thinking how fragile his rib cage seemed, how terrible were the warring desires to cherish and to crush it. He continued silent. (from p. 144-145)
That's just a few paragraphs, but that scene continues for two more pages, and these kind of scenes are all throughout the book.
Mary Renault defends her portrayal in the author's afterward at the back of the book, citing a lot of evidence that Alexander and Hephaistion were probably more than friends, before finally concluding. "No physical relationship is proved, and those whom the thought disturbs are free to reject it" (p. 374).
In other words, Mary Renault spends a lot of time talking about the love between Alexander and Hephaistion, but always stopping short of portraying a physical sexual relationship.
This would be quite clever, were it not the same approach that everyone else seems to use. Oliver Stone's movie also hinted quite strongly at love between Hephaistion and Alexander, without ever explicitly showing a sexual relationship. So did Manfredi. At a certain point, I get tired of all these ambiguous portrayals, and wish some author would just have the guts to go one way or the other. I could go for either portrayal at this point: either full on homosexual lovers, or just plain old heterosexual bros. I just want someone to have the courage to choose one.
...but of course I'm being unfair, because I'm judging Mary Renault's 1969 book against material that all came after it. At the time, this pseudo-homosexual portrayal was no doubt quite shocking.
So, those are all my complaints about this book. Now onto the positives:
The Positives
One of the really great things about this book is how three-dimensional all the characters are.
I appreciate this all the more after coming out of Manfredi's trilogy, where quite often Alexander's companions were just a list of names that followed him everywhere. Mary Renault, on the other hand, knows how to write characters.
Aristotle, for instance, is not just a supporting character to the saga of Alexander the Great. He's someone portrayed with his own motivations and ambitions.
Alexander's great antagonist Demosthenes is in many ways the villain of the book. And yet, he is not simply a mindless antagonist to Alexander's greatness. Mary Renault shines the spotlight on him for several pages, highlighting his motivations, his insecurities, his jealousies, et cetera.
In this book, you really get to understand all the characters and what they want.
(It's worth mentioning here that this isn't easy to do. In fiction, the author has the luxury of creating their own characters whole, and thus can always give the characters personalities consistent with their actions. In historical fiction, the actions of the characters are already pre-determined, and the author has to go back and give realistic motivations to explain what is already a matter of record. Not everyone can make these historical characters fully come to life as real people, but Mary Renault has done an excellent job.)
There is also a very rich portrayal of the ancient Greek world. Mary Renault, a classicist who has written many books on ancient Greece, knows the world of her characters very well. Before writing her trilogy on Alexander the Great, she had already written on book on the Peloponneisan War (W), and one book on the aftermath of the Peloponneisan War (W), and she weaves in these rich historical details about Athens and Sparta in with her story of the rise of Macedonia.
(After having read this book, I feel like I really want to read more about ancient Greek history. I probably want get to it anytime soon, but Mary Renault creates the feeling of such a rich world that I feel the desire to learn more about the Peloponneisan Wars.)
Well, those are all my thoughts on Fire from Heaven. I'm off to the next book in Mary Renault's trilogy next: The Persian Boy.
Link of the Day
We Are All...Fill in the Blank
And the honest answer is: yeah, a little bit. But after seeing Mary Renault's trilogy so highly praised, I decided I had to give it a try. Plus, another reason I wanted to read Mary Renault's trilogy is because the last book in the trilogy, Funeral Games, tackles something neither Freeman nor Manfredi cover: the descent of Alexander the Great's empire into warring factions following Alexander's death. And I'm really looking forward to learning more about that period.
However I'm not up to Funeral Games yet, and this first book in the trilogy, covering Alexander's boyhood up to his father's assassination, is material I've already seen covered by Manfredi and Freeman. It's slightly boring to retread it again, but at the same time, it's also kind of fun to see a different spin that a different author puts on the same events. And that, after all, is the fun of historical fiction. So on the whole, I'd say I'm still enjoying myself with Alexander the Great reading.
The Review
One of the reviewers I quoted above already mentions this, but Mary Renault does write in a very poetical way at times.
Not all the time. There are sections of the book where the drama is pushed forward by sparse narration. But there are a lot of other descriptions in this book that are perhaps more poetical than prose.
Readers will probably differ in how much they appreciate these poetical descriptions. For my part, I admit to struggling with them a bit. But no doubt this will differ from reader to reader, so I'll quote a typical long descriptive section of the book (something that I struggled to keep focused on), and you can decide for yourself how appealing this prose sounds to you.
The mild summer day declined to evening. On the salt lake of Pella fell the shadow of its island fort, where the treasury and the dungeons were. Lamps glimmered in windows up and down the town; a household slave came out with a resined torch, to kindle the great cressets upheld by seated lions at the foot of the Palace steps. The lowing of homebound cattle sounded in the plains; in the mountains, which turned towards Pella their shadowed eastern faces, far-distant watch fires sparked the grey.
The boy sat on the Palace roof, looking down at the town, the lagoon, and the little fisher-boats making for their moorings. It was his bedtime, and he was keeping out of his nurse's way till he had seen his mother, who might give him leave to stay up. Men mending the roof had gone home, without removing their ladders. It was a chance not to be wasted.
He sat on the tiles of Pentelic marble, shipped in by King Archelaos; the gutter under his thighs, between his knees an antefix in the shape of a gorgon's head, the paint faded by weather. Grasping the snaky hair, he was outstaring the long drop, defying its earth-daimons. Going back he would have to to look down; they must be settled with beforehand.
Soon they gave in, as such creatures did when challenged. He ate the stale bread he had stolen instead of supper. It would have been hot posset, flavored with honey and wine; the smell had been tempting, but at supper one was caught for bed. Nothing could be had for nothing.
A bleat sounded from below. They had brought the black goat, it must be nearly time. Better now not to ask beforehand. Once he was there, she would not send him away.
He picked his way down the long spaces of the ladder-rungs made for men. The beaten earth-daimons kept their distance; he sang himself a song of victory. From the lower roof to the ground; no one was there but a few tired slaves going off duty. Indoors Hellanike would be searching; he must go around outside. He was getting too much for her; he had heard his mother say so. (p.33-34)
....et cetera. To be fair, not all of the passages are quite that slow moving. (Mary Renault can also speed up the action when she wants to). But a fair amount of the prose is like this.
Of course some people will love those descriptive passages. (In fact, based on all the high praise this book has gotten, it's fair to say many people have really loved those descriptive passages.) So although they tried my patience at times, perhaps that's my fault and not the book's. Perhaps I was just not the ideal reader for this book.
The other big negative for me was there was way too much focus in this book on Alexander's relationship with Hephaistion.
Some historical context is perhaps in order here. According to Wikipedia, Mary Renault was one of the first 20th century writers to write sympathetically about romantic love between two men, and this made her a popular figure in the emerging gay rights movement in the 1970s. (Fire from Heaven, although not the only work of Mary Renault to deal with love between men, was written in 1969, so you can imagine it was pretty far ahead of its time back then.)
However, those of us with a low tolerance for mushy romance, whether it be homosexual or heterosexual, will find all the scenes of Alexander and Hephaistion gazing into each other's eyes a little bit tiring.
To quote from one of them:
He looked deep into Hephaistion's eyes, as always before a confidence. As always, Hephaistion felt as if his midriff were melting. As always, it was some moments before he could follow what he was being told.
"...who were in other cities and escaped the siege, have been begging Father to have Stagira restored and the citizens enfranchised. That's what this Aristotle wants. What Father wants, is an alliance with Hermeias. It's a piece of horse-trading. Leoidas came for politics, too. Old Phoinix is the only one who came for me."
Hephaistion tightened his arm. His feelings were confused; he wanted to grasp till Alexander's very bones were somehow engulfed within himself, but knew this to be wicked and mad; he would kill anyone who harmed a hair of his head.
"They don't know I've seen this. I just say Yes, Father. I've not even told my mother. I want to make my own mind up when I've seen the man, and do what I think good without anyone knowing why. This is only between us two. My mother is entirely against philosophy."
Hephaistion was thinking how fragile his rib cage seemed, how terrible were the warring desires to cherish and to crush it. He continued silent. (from p. 144-145)
That's just a few paragraphs, but that scene continues for two more pages, and these kind of scenes are all throughout the book.
Mary Renault defends her portrayal in the author's afterward at the back of the book, citing a lot of evidence that Alexander and Hephaistion were probably more than friends, before finally concluding. "No physical relationship is proved, and those whom the thought disturbs are free to reject it" (p. 374).
In other words, Mary Renault spends a lot of time talking about the love between Alexander and Hephaistion, but always stopping short of portraying a physical sexual relationship.
This would be quite clever, were it not the same approach that everyone else seems to use. Oliver Stone's movie also hinted quite strongly at love between Hephaistion and Alexander, without ever explicitly showing a sexual relationship. So did Manfredi. At a certain point, I get tired of all these ambiguous portrayals, and wish some author would just have the guts to go one way or the other. I could go for either portrayal at this point: either full on homosexual lovers, or just plain old heterosexual bros. I just want someone to have the courage to choose one.
...but of course I'm being unfair, because I'm judging Mary Renault's 1969 book against material that all came after it. At the time, this pseudo-homosexual portrayal was no doubt quite shocking.
So, those are all my complaints about this book. Now onto the positives:
The Positives
One of the really great things about this book is how three-dimensional all the characters are.
I appreciate this all the more after coming out of Manfredi's trilogy, where quite often Alexander's companions were just a list of names that followed him everywhere. Mary Renault, on the other hand, knows how to write characters.
Aristotle, for instance, is not just a supporting character to the saga of Alexander the Great. He's someone portrayed with his own motivations and ambitions.
Alexander's great antagonist Demosthenes is in many ways the villain of the book. And yet, he is not simply a mindless antagonist to Alexander's greatness. Mary Renault shines the spotlight on him for several pages, highlighting his motivations, his insecurities, his jealousies, et cetera.
In this book, you really get to understand all the characters and what they want.
(It's worth mentioning here that this isn't easy to do. In fiction, the author has the luxury of creating their own characters whole, and thus can always give the characters personalities consistent with their actions. In historical fiction, the actions of the characters are already pre-determined, and the author has to go back and give realistic motivations to explain what is already a matter of record. Not everyone can make these historical characters fully come to life as real people, but Mary Renault has done an excellent job.)
There is also a very rich portrayal of the ancient Greek world. Mary Renault, a classicist who has written many books on ancient Greece, knows the world of her characters very well. Before writing her trilogy on Alexander the Great, she had already written on book on the Peloponneisan War (W), and one book on the aftermath of the Peloponneisan War (W), and she weaves in these rich historical details about Athens and Sparta in with her story of the rise of Macedonia.
(After having read this book, I feel like I really want to read more about ancient Greek history. I probably want get to it anytime soon, but Mary Renault creates the feeling of such a rich world that I feel the desire to learn more about the Peloponneisan Wars.)
Well, those are all my thoughts on Fire from Heaven. I'm off to the next book in Mary Renault's trilogy next: The Persian Boy.
Link of the Day
We Are All...Fill in the Blank
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