Over the Wine-Dark Sea, by H. N. Turteltaub. Book review

Tom Doherty Associates, 2001. ISBN 0-312-87660-2. 381 pages.

Over the Wine-Dark Sea is set in the Eastern Mediterranean in spring to autumn of 310 BC. According to the Historical Notes, one of the two central characters, Menedemos, is a historical figure, as is Antandros of Syracuse who makes a brief appearance. All the other characters who appear in the novel are fictional.

In spring 310 BC, Menedemos and his cousin Sostratos, two young merchants from Rhodes, are eager to put to sea for their summer trading trip to Great Hellas, the Greek colonies and city-states of Sicily and mainland Italy. Their ship, the Aphrodite, jointly owned by their fathers, is a merchant galley with forty rowers as well as a sail for propulsion. Unlike the broad sail-only trading ships, the Aphrodite does not need to wait for a favourable wind; the rowers can take her wherever her captain wants to go. But this also means she is expensive to run, as the crew have to be paid wages, and her cargo space is limited. So the Aphrodite carries luxury goods, perfume, silk, fine wine, dye, papyrus, ink – and peafowl, exotic birds from India that have never before been seen in Great Hellas. Menedemos and Sostratos will need their wits and a shrewd eye for a deal to cover their costs and bring back a profit. But as well as business risks and the ever-present danger of pirates and bad weather, several wars are raging along the Aphrodite’s intended route: between Syracuse and Carthage; between an obscure Italian tribe called the Romans and their neighbours to the south; and between the various generals who inherited parts of the empire of Alexander the Great after his death a decade ago and are now fighting each other in Egypt, mainland Greece, Asia Minor and the seas in between. One miscalculation could see Menedemos, Sostratos and all their crew dead or for sale in a slave market – and on top of this, there is Menedemos’ liking for other men’s wives...

Over the Wine-Dark Sea is a highly entertaining travelogue of the varied cultures and geography of the Eastern Mediterranean in antiquity. It doesn’t really have a plot as such – Menedemos and Sostratos travel from one island or port to the next, buy things, sell things, get into and (hopefully) out of trouble, and hope to return home safely and profitably. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing (after all, the same sort of comment could be made about The Odyssey). Their journey is colourful and varied enough, and the cousins’ contrasting characters amusing enough, to make Over the Wine-Dark Sea great fun to read. The cousins’ bickering is often witty, and there are a few knowing jokes, like the various Hellenes who solemnly opine that the obscure barbarian tribe called the Romans will never amount to anything much. The difficulties of managing a peacock, five peahens (and in due course a multitude of chicks) in the cramped confines of the ship form a running joke for most of the book.

Over the Wine-Dark Sea is also immensely informative about the ancient world. Each of the ports, harbours and towns is described, often with snippets of its history and layout. Different types of ships are described and named, along with their development over time and the various uses for the different types. Hellenic social conventions and customs are described and shown in detail; haggling over a business deal; the correct format for a symposion (a drinking party for wealthy men, a sort of cross between a dinner party and a stag do); the names of different courses in a meal; conventions about which hand to eat with and how many fingers to use for different types of food; sports activities at the gymnasion. All of these are restricted to men, of course. The confined life imposed on women is acknowledged (and Sostratos is sensitive enough to feel just a little bit uncomfortable about it occasionally), but women don’t get much of a role except as possessions for men to squabble over.

Both Menedemos and Sostratos are familiar with Homer and like to relate the places they see to the poetry – could the whirlpool they see in the Straits of Messina be the original Charybdis, could this or that island be where Odysseus encountered the Sirens or the Cyclops? Sostratos also has aspirations to be a historian and likes to collect obscure facts, such as two different theories about how the town of Rhegion got its name, or the correct way to wear a toga. All this information has an undeniable tendency to slow down the plot, and I can imagine that some readers might find it annoying, although I quite liked these obscure excursions. For readers who want to imagine what it might have been like to trade luxury goods around the Aegean and Italy in the ancient world, what items came from where, and how money and coinage worked, there is much to enjoy.

The book is written throughout in straightforward modern English (with American spellings). Some of the different cultures are given different accents or dialects to distinguish them from one another; one region of Greece drops ‘H’s, Macedonia has an archaic dialect, and a slave girl kidnapped from Cisalpine Gaul in the distant north of Italy is given an Irish accent and turn of phrase to emphasise her foreignness.

A brief Historical Note outlines the historical events that form the background to Menedemos’ and Sostratos’ journey, and there is a very useful note at the front about weights, measures and units of money. This is well worth bookmarking, as the characters refer to these units constantly and it is very useful to be able to flip back quickly to see whether a minai is a small fortune or small change. An excellent map at the front is very useful for following the Aphrodite’s journey.

Colourful and entertaining account of the episodic adventures of two young traders shipping luxury goods around the Eastern Mediterranean in 310 BC. 

The Boy With Two Heads, by JM Newsome. Book review

Trifolium Books UK, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9568104-4-1. 364 pages. Also available as an e-book. 

Disclaimer: Trifolium Books UK also publish my novel, Paths of Exile. They didn’t ask me to review The Boy With Two Heads, and although I heard of The Boy With Two Heads through them, I don’t think that has affected my opinion.

The Boy With Two Heads is a time-slip novel for young adults, set in ancient Greece in 432 BC and modern Athens and Cumbria (northern England) in 2010. Phidias, master sculptor, architect and engineer, and his brother Panainos, master painter, are historical figures who play important roles in the historical storyline. The main character in the historical storyline, Themis, a young athlete competing in the ancient Olympic Games, is fictional, as are all the characters in the modern storyline. 

In 432 BC, Themistocles (Themis), a twelve-year-old boy living in Athens, is training to compete in the boxing at the Olympic Games to be held later that year, when an accident leaves him unconscious with a serious head injury. In 2010 AD, Suzanne is a fourteen-year-old girl on a school trip to Athens, with athletic ambitions of her own. A road accident on exactly the same spot as Themis’ accident 2,400 years earlier leaves Suzanne in a coma. Somehow her spirit is drawn back through time to keep Themis alive. With the ‘wrong’ spirit inhabiting his body, Themis has no memory of anything before his accident and has to learn about his life all over again, with occasional bewildering glimpses into 21st-century medical technology. Suzanne, unconscious most of the time, sees glimpses of Themis’ life in visions. Gradually, it becomes apparent that Themis is the target of a mysterious plot against his life. Will he survive to compete at the Olympics?  And will Suzanne’s spirit be released back to her, or will she remain trapped in the past for ever? 

As regular readers may know, I am not well attuned to time-slip novels.  I almost always find that I get interested in one storyline, usually the historical one, at the expense of the other (for example, in The House on the Strand, reviewed here earlier).  Unusually, in The Boy With Two Heads I found the modern storyline as intriguing as the historical one.  I read the book twice, and although I picked up some links and cross-references between the two storylines second time round, I still found myself reading it as two separate narratives. Which is not how time-slip novels are meant to be read, so bear in mind that I won’t have appreciated the time-slip aspect of the novel.

The modern storyline has a powerful sense of suspense – will Suzanne make a recovery?  It brilliantly captures the sudden disorienting shock of a serious accident in a city far from home, and the anxiety and fear felt by Suzanne’s friends and family. The author also makes very effective use of modern communication tools such as blogs and Facebook – second nature to modern teenagers – to tell the modern story from several viewpoints, in an ingenious variation on the epistolary novel. 

The historical storyline forms a larger share of the novel than the modern storyline. It is excellent on historical detail, especially as Themis has lost his memory and has to learn about his life and world all over again, so the reader gets to learn it with him. Anyone looking for a painless way to gain a detailed picture of classical Greek housing, food, clothing, travel, athletic training, religion, bronze casting, and the immensely intricate engineering and artistry that went into creating a giant statue of Zeus with ivory skin, gilded robes and glowing eyes, will love this book.  Not to mention the description of the ancient Olympic Games, with the athletes’ oath, the opening and closing ceremonies, the vast tent city housing the competitors, trainers, spectators and hangers-on, and the athletic competitions themselves, culminating in Themis’ boxing bout.

The pace is steady, and I found less of a sense of suspense in the historical storyline than the modern one, because it was not initially clear to me that there was more at stake than Themis getting his memory back.  Having lost his memory, Themis is not aware that he has qualified to compete in the Olympics, and I did not pick up on the seriousness of the plot against him until well into the novel. 

Characterisation is lively, especially that of the cheerful, rotund and rather irreverent Panainos. There are some neat parallels between young people’s issues and dilemmas in the two storylines – some things don’t change much in 2,400 years.  I have a suspicion that Ancient Greece was probably nastier than its portrayal here, but there are limits on what can reasonably be put into a young adult novel, and in any case an athlete from a prosperous family was probably more sheltered than most.

A list of characters is useful for keeping track of the cast, especially minor figures, and a glossary explains the Greek terms used in the text. Both of these are at the back, so it is worth bookmarking them for easy reference.  There is a map of Athens at the front, and maps of ancient Olympia and the sailing route to it at the back, all useful for following the characters’ movements. A brief Author’s Note outlines some of the historical background, and there is more information on the author’s blog.

Time-slip novel for young adults set at the Olympic Games in ancient Greece in 432 BC and in modern Britain.

The Boy with Two Heads, by Julia Newsome

Trifolium Books UK, publishers of Kathleen Herbert's fourth novel Moon In Leo (reviewed here) and my own Paths of Exile, have now published a third title.

The Boy With Two Heads, by Julia Newsome (ISBN: 978-0-8568104-4-1), is a time-slip young adult novel about the ancient Olympics in Classical Greece.

Here's the cover copy:

It all starts in Athens.
In 432 BC, they think Themis is dead. Suzanne, who is on a school trip in 2010, is drawn through thousands of years to keep him alive. Will Themis’ destiny be death or glory in the Games of the 87th Olympiad? Will Suzanne regain control of her life, or will her mind be occupied forever by the past, while her body lies in hospital in present-day Cumbria?


“This book transported me effortlessly back to ancient Greece, vividly evoking its sights, sounds and even smells. And I found that young people’s issues have hardly changed in 2,400 years!”
Marion Clarke, fiction editor

“A wonderful story which brings the ancient Olympics to vibrant life and links them to contemporary young people. You can almost smell Greece, and there is a lovely equivalence of teenage feelings and humour, then and now. I couldn’t put it down and didn’t realize how much I had learnt until after the enthralling climax.”
Philippa Harrison, former Managing Director of Macmillan and Little Brown UK

More information on the Trifolium Books blog. Available to order now from bookshops (including Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk), or direct from the publisher (contact details via the Trifolium website, here).

I think an e-book version is planned in due course.

More about the book and the author on the author's blog, here.

The Bull from the Sea, by Mary Renault. Book review

First published 1962. Edition reviewed: Arrow, 2004, ISBN 0-09-946353-9

It seems a bit of a cheek to review a Mary Renault novel, a little like having the impertinence to review Dickens or Shakespeare. Her novels are classics of historical fiction, and seem rather above my likes and dislikes. However, when I first came across Mary Renault’s Greek-set novels in the town library a couple of decades ago I didn’t know they were classics and had no idea what to expect, so maybe there are people in the same boat now. And certainly her writing was as fresh and vivid to me on a recent re-reading as it was when it was all new to me, so that seemed worth celebrating.

The Bull from the Sea is the second part of the story of the legendary Greek hero Theseus of Athens. The first part of Theseus’ life, covering his boyhood and his defeat of the Minotaur in Crete, was told in The King Must Die. The Bull from the Sea takes up the story when Theseus returns victorious to Athens, only to find that his father has committed suicide in despair (because Theseus forgot – accidentally or otherwise – to change the black sail of his ship to a white one to show that he was returning home alive). Theseus is now King of Athens, a small and comparatively poor city-state with predatory neighbours and internal factions, and as he establishes his rule he finds his adventures are only just beginning. He has to contend with pirates, with a barbarian invasion from the north that threatens the very heart of his kingdom, with the warlike Amazons and their fierce and beautiful queen Hippolyta, who becomes his lover, and with the jealous rage of his wife and the consequent tragedy.

The legend of Theseus belongs to the same sort of period as the Trojan War, perhaps best described as legendary history. How far the legends were based on real events and people is uncertain; what is certain is that they exerted a powerful hold on the imagination and are still being retold now, thousands of years later. The Bull from the Sea is set in Bronze Age Greece, placed a generation or so before the Trojan War – a young Achilles makes a fleeting appearance towards the end of the novel. Many of the characters are familiar figures in Greek myth – Theseus, Ariadne, Hippolyta, Oedipus (yes, he of the complex) – so they are not fictional in the sense that the author invented them, but whether they are historical is debatable.

The writing has a lean, spare, muscular style that makes masterly use of hints and gaps left for the reader’s imagination to fill in. I’m reminded of the economical elegance of classical sculpture, or the figures painted on Greek pottery. The power of Fate is an ever-present thread running through the plot as Theseus sees his destiny unfolding in response to forces beyond his control. But the novel never veers into overt fantasy. The gods never appear in the flesh, and the legendary events like the bull of Poseidon (the Bull from the Sea of the title) are given natural explanations that might have formed the basis for the development of the legends. Action and dialogue keep the plot spinning, and although Fate is always present it is conveyed in hints so the reader is always in suspense – even on an umpteenth reading when you know the end.

Theseus and the other characters are all individuals, sketched in with a few words and actions. Naturally, the reader learns most about Theseus, since the novel is narrated in first person from Theseus’ point of view, but as Theseus is outward-looking and eager for new things the reader gets to learn about other people too. The societies and cultures of Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean are imagined and brought to life in all their wonder and variety. This is probably the aspect that draws me back to Mary Renault, her ability to portray a world that is completely different from ours and to make it real on the page without losing any of its strangeness. This is Theseus’ world, not ours, and entering it is spellbinding. Is it accurate? I have no idea. Is it convincing? Yes, absolutely. Mary Renault has few equals. This is why I read historical fiction.

Masterful retelling of the Theseus legend.

Has anyone else read it?