Songs on Bronze : The Greek Myths Made Real, by Nigel Spivey
Coming Soon!
A Vivid, uninhibited retelling of the classic Greek stories
Songs on Bronze is the first major retelling of Greek mythology in half a century; a set of lively, daring versions of the great myths, which gives them to us as the spellbinding stories they are.
"These are not the Greek myths you remember from school. To clean out the Augean stables, Herakles invents 'the world's first sewage drain: Trapped in the Labyrinth with the man-eating Minotaur, Theseus feels 'a flicker of affinity' with the beast. At Troy, an exasperated Achilles pummels his 'loudmouth' comrade Thersites until his brains are 'oozing out of his skull' And poor Medea, that 'amazing, resourceful girl' who rescues Jason and the fleece and even forgoes a career to raise his children: she is dumped for a dumb little princess 'still in her teens'.
"[Spivey's] racy retelling-in an artfully compressed single narrative-is a heroic feat in itself, suggesting that the songs of Orpheus are no less juicy than a season of The Sopranos."
-HUGH EAKIN, The New York Times Book Review
272pages