Troy

 

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After going as far as I could down the rabbit hole of Delaney’s Wardstone Chronicles, I felt that a different tone of adventure was much needed this week. Enter Stephen Fry’s latest instalment in his Greek mythology series: Troy. Having absolutely adored Mythos and Heroes, when I saw this on the New Release table of my local bookshop, it was a pocket of sparkling joy in a grey end of the year. 

The narrative of Troy is self-explanatory. Fry, with his signature eloquence and sharp wit, excitingly details every aspect of the Trojan War, from its humble beginnings to its central players, and the eventual bloody conclusion. Various tales of romance, prophesy, betrayal, trickery, war, and heroism fill the pages, complete with delightful footnotes that both refresh our memories as to the cast of players as well as provide various splashes of humour, as Fry veers off on a tangent and inserts some personal opinions. 

More than an exciting and intelligent retelling of the one of the most famous/infamous battles in ‘history’, Troy explores the story and backstories of the battle with an artistic interpretation. What I mean by that is, Fry goes on a sort of speculative and somewhat provocative exploration into the artistic and legendary meanings and messages that come from the story and how/why certain parts of it have transcended generations to take up root in our modern language, education, entertainment, and even narrative genres. So much of the Trojan War remains in words and phrases that we use day-to-day and this is what Fry explores as he describes the various rapes, pillages, and battles that pad out the story.

Image credit: AXSChat

While Fry writes with a succinct and fiercely intelligent prose, there is also a slightly mournful tone that gets dropped into the mix as the dark side of mankind begins to take over the story, strong enough to make the gods themselves turn away. There’s a lot happening in this book that causes the reader to really go on a rollercoaster of feels and that it what I loved about it!

Author: Stephen Fry, 2020

Published: Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House