Troy

by Adèle Geras

Overview

The classic struggle between Greece and Troy brought to life by a panoramic chorus of voices both humble and high, human and divine.
     The siege of Troy has lasted almost ten years. Inside the walled city, food is becoming scarce and the death toll is rising. From the heights of Mount Olympus, the Gods keep watch.
     But Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, is bored with the endless, dreary war, and so she turns her attention to two sisters: Marpessa, who is gifted with God-sight and serves as handmaiden to Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world; and Xanthe, who is kind and loving and tends the wounded soldiers in the Blood Room. When Eros fits an arrow to his silver-lit bow and lets it fly, neither sister will escape its power.
     With vitality and grace, Adèle Geras breathes personality, heartbreak, and humor into this classic story. This is truly an inspired novel, in which the Gods move among mortals and an ancient city is brought to life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544925465
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	493,891
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	670L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Adèle Geras is the celebrated author of many books for all ages, including Troy and Ithaka. She lives in Cambridge, England.

Editorial Reviews

"Engrossing. . . . Delivers the sack of Troy as an ambitious, cinematic affair."—The New York Times Book Review
"A sexy, sweeping tale, filled with drama, sassy humor, and vividly imagined domestic details."—Booklist
(star)"Captivating."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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From the Publisher

With exceptional grace and enormous energy, Geras (The Tower Room; Pictures of the Night) recreates the saga of the Trojan war from a feminist perspective, by delving into the hearts and minds of the women behind the scenes. The author plunges readers into the thick of the action to become intimately acquainted with both familiar mythological characters and the common folk around whom this retelling revolves. She focuses primarily on two orphaned sisters: Xanthe, caretaker of Andromache's child and a healer in the "blood room" where the injured men are taken, and Marpessa, Helen's favored assistant who can see the gods. The siblings are devoted to each other until Aphrodite reeks havoc in their lives, causing them to fall in love with the same wounded soldier. Although Xanthe nurses young Alastor back to health, he chooses instead soft-spoken Marpessa to be his lover, despite the fact that his mother has already arranged for him to be married to a girl of higher standing. While jealousy rends the bond between sisters, the fighting outside the city walls continues. Hector, Paris and Achilles play out their dramatic finales while "gossips" (older servants reminiscent of a Greek chorus) recount tales of victory and woe (the infamous "Judgment of Paris," the tale of how Ulysses was drafted into the Trojan War, etc.). Meanwhile, gods and goddesses Zeus, Hermes, Ares, Athena, Poseidon and Aphrodite drift in and out of people's lives like fragments of dreams to offer mixed blessings, prophesies and consolation. The effect of this novel is similar to that of a confidently conducted symphony that brings new meaning to a renowned masterpiece: harmonious strains alternate with cacophonous segments to evoke a vast array of moods. Multidimensional images of familiar mythological characters emerge deities who hold the fates of Trojans in their hands as well as human heroes and heroines who change the course of the war. But Geras focuses most of the attention on the universal experiences of mortals struggling to survive. Mythology buffs will savor the author's ability to embellish stories of old without diminishing their original flavor; the uninitiated will find this a captivating introduction to one of the pivotal events of classic Greek literature. Ages 14-up. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 9 Up-The Trojan War was the original miniseries; trying to cram it into one volume is an epic task. Homer could count on his audience's familiarity with the story. Roger Lancelyn Green, in The Tale of Troy (Puffin, 1995), began deep into the prewar past and narrated chronologically. Geras, like Homer, sets her novel in the last months of the 10-year conflict. She incorporates the back story by an ingenious (but artificial) means: describing tapestries, recounting gossips' chatter or the revelations of visiting gods. (The gods appear and speak, but the mortals are skeptical or forgetful.) There's still a lot to keep straight, and readers will struggle. It doesn't help that the two invented sister characters at the center of the novel are thin, one-dimensional figures: their love for the same man (an equally undeveloped character) is meant to be the focus, but remains at the romance-novel level. The diction ranges from British to slang ("tits," "screw," and "Hera hangs around with Agamemnon"); the absence of specific terms (like amphora or chiton) sacrifices atmosphere for easier reading. The inherent drama of Troy is replaced by the simpler love conflict and its attendant woes (like an unplanned pregnancy). Sometimes Geras's writing is inspired, but Clemence McLaren's Inside the Walls of Troy (Atheneum, 1996) and Paul Fleischman's Dateline: Troy (Candlewick, 1996) are still much better bets.-Patricia Lothrop-Green, St. George's School, Newport, RI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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