Reading Recommendation: Ransom, by David Malouf
For the last few years, everyone has been really thrilled about Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and Circe, and justifiably so because they are both insanely good books and I love them. I will at some point review them on this blog. But in the spirit of throwbacks, I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to another, different re-telling of Homer — specifically of the Iliad — bestowed upon humankind in the early aughts by Australian word-god David Malouf. The novel in question is called Ransom (2009) and, literarily speaking, it is actually better than Song of Achilles. That’s right. Better. You can tell because it was published by Vintage, which of all Penguin’s presses screams #fancy the loudest. At any rate, Ransom is peerless among Homeric re-ups, and I’m here today to tell you why.
When I say Malouf’s umpteenth masterpiece is “better” than other, more marketable books, I mean two things. First, I mean that it’s subtler, more nuanced, a.k.a. it’s a simpler work of art that nonetheless achieves a greater degree of emotional depth than its comparators. Second, I mean that it’s more poetic – both formally (it has an airtight narrative with no unplanned sprawl, an elegant parallel structure, and an even, deliberate distribution of tension) and linguistically (not a single word is wasted, but at no point does the author’s careful deliberation draw attention to itself or appear contrived). Phew! That was a lot of analysis! Hopefully I’ve convinced you by now of Ransom’s ascendancy among twenty-first-century Homeric retellings. Now let me explain what the book is about.
As you’ve probably guessed, Ransom tells the story of Achilles: son of King Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis, beloved hero of the Trojan War, and bereaved companion of Patroclus, his best friend and maybe lover. But this isn’t the conventional tale of Achilles’ rise to fame, or even of his triumphs in battle. Instead, it’s an account of his reckoning with the loss of his soulmate, who dies on the field as a by-blow of our hero’s own pride. But Ransom goes beyond Achilles’ story. In fact, the novel takes a second protagonist, another grieving man (hence the parallel plot structure I mentioned earlier): Priam, elderly king of Troy, whose first-born son, Hector, kills Patroclus unwittingly, and falls in turn to Achilles’ spear. So the plot begins: as the miserable husk who was once “the best of the Greeks” loses himself in the daily violation of Hector’s corpse, dragging it behind his chariot in a series of gruesome romps beneath the walls of Troy, the king of that city journeys in secret to his enemies’ war camp, resolved to beg Achilles to give over Hector’s body in exchange for a golden ransom.
Okay, so I’ve told you why Ransom is good, I’ve told you what it’s about, and now it’s time for me to wrap things up. Last thing I’ll say in today’s review: my favorite part of this book, other than its shattering humanity, is Malouf’s portrayal of the gods, who feature strongly in the narratives of both protagonists – especially Priam’s. They seem so real, the way Malouf writes them, and so genuinely divine, that it feels like they could appear beside me right now, inviting me with knowing smiles to undertake my own fatal adventure. Give Ransom a read, and maybe the gods will find you, too. And probably ruin your life.
