Book review: The Athenian Murders
Jul. 8th, 2009 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaebilitySo I'm reading The Athenian Murders by José Carlos Somoza. And. It's. Awesome.
I usually read very quickly; I've mastered the art of skimming. But I'm deliberately reading this slowly, forcing myself to read every damn word on the page. Because? It's awesome.
There are two storylines occurring simultaneously: A murder that occurred in ancient Greece and then the translation of that story by a modern-day scholar who talks to the audience through footnotes. But! That's not even the coolest thing. The translator notices that the text makes use of eidesis, a literary device used by the Greeks in which words and phrases are repeated in order to "evoke a particular image or idea."
SO COOL.
I don't know if eidesis is a real literary device or if Somoza created it for the book; I've never come across it in my literature courses or the few classes I took on the classics, and a Google didn't turn up much. But the idea of it, that you can subtly tell another story within a story, is so freaking cool. Makes me want to dig out all the plays I read in college and pick through them. I decided on the train that I was going to try it in my crappy fantasy story that I've been working on, so today I tried adding bits about beaks, teeth, and birds, which are images that'll be imperative to the finale. Eeeee so cool.
EDIT: Well played, The Athenian Murders, well played.
I usually read very quickly; I've mastered the art of skimming. But I'm deliberately reading this slowly, forcing myself to read every damn word on the page. Because? It's awesome.
There are two storylines occurring simultaneously: A murder that occurred in ancient Greece and then the translation of that story by a modern-day scholar who talks to the audience through footnotes. But! That's not even the coolest thing. The translator notices that the text makes use of eidesis, a literary device used by the Greeks in which words and phrases are repeated in order to "evoke a particular image or idea."
SO COOL.
I don't know if eidesis is a real literary device or if Somoza created it for the book; I've never come across it in my literature courses or the few classes I took on the classics, and a Google didn't turn up much. But the idea of it, that you can subtly tell another story within a story, is so freaking cool. Makes me want to dig out all the plays I read in college and pick through them. I decided on the train that I was going to try it in my crappy fantasy story that I've been working on, so today I tried adding bits about beaks, teeth, and birds, which are images that'll be imperative to the finale. Eeeee so cool.
EDIT: Well played, The Athenian Murders, well played.
