Review 'The Song of Achilles' by Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles is the most tragic masterpiece I have ever read. We all know the story of Achilles. It has doomed written all over it. Yet as you read TSOA, you can't help but ignite that spark of hope that this book will be different. That this will be the moment history gets rewritten.

The pain you get while reading TSOA isn't the all-consuming kind that has you bawling your eyes out. The pain TSOA gives you is like the aftermath of an earth-shattering explosion. It's white noise and an ear-deafening ringing in your ears. It's a dizzy haziness as shock slowly settles around you like dust. It's a force so powerful, pressing down on your chest you forget how to breathe. The pain you get while reading TSOA isn't the messy sobbing kind. It's the one that splinters your soul apart so deeply inside you, it's barely noticeable on the outside.

The crying comes afterward, like a tsunamic echo of an earthquake. It's silent rain dripping softly, it's the edge of the cloud. Then comes the storm that brings the flood. And suddenly the world around you is drowning, waterfalls pouring endlessly around you and dams breaking again and again and again.

You're never really okay anymore after finishing this book. It sticks with you like a scar on your heart. you carry its weight with you for the rest of eternity because that's how deeply this story has touched you. And you come to realize that there is a before and an after. Before reading TSOA, when the world is still colorful and lively. After when everything has turned grey and the only color you can find is in the memories of this story.

Miller's writing is so beautifully poetic. It's soft, carrying a sense of unrelenting hope with every word while simultaneously dragging that sense of doom behind. Its prose curls warmly around you like an eternal friend that will never leave you.

The story of Achilles and Patroclus has been told for thousands of years and will continue to be told for thousands more. You might think that is because of the Trojan war but in truth, there is so much more to it. The story of Achilles and Patroclus is more than a war story of childhood friends. It is a love story. Perhaps the most intense love story of all time. It's a story of tragic heroes who loved each other so much they were willing to lay down their life for one another. It's a love story so intense you feel every wrecked sob of these precious characters slice through your body like the most brutal whip. It's a story unlike any other that has ever been written. One no one's entirely sure about whether it actually happened or not. Still, there isn't a soul in history who isn't able to feel these deeply rooted feelings that are woven throughout this story. And that is the most magical thing about stories: to carry us back thousands of years in time to witness the most intimate love story of its time and to feel it all. There's a reason the story of Achilles and Patroclus is still being told to this day. It's because no love will ever compare to the one they had.