Untellectual #2: Forbidden Love

Disapproving mothers and unlikely couples

In case you missed it, see my first post for an explanation of my book review system and its purpose.

Untellectual: Casual Book Reviews

As a reminder, the rating system is a three dimensional scale (x, y, z) where the coordinates correspond to (quality of writing, pace of story, enjoyability). Each of these will be rated 1-10. There is also a final read or don’t-read recommendation.

After feedback from some subscribers, I will now be transitioning to a weekly format with fewer books. Please keep the feedback coming and I will continue to adjust!

Now let’s dive in to this week’s two books:

Note: both of these were recommended to me by Maddy (an icon). Thank you Maddy!!

1. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: READ (writing 7, pace 7, enjoyability 8)
   I was not expecting to love this one as much as I did. The book jacket previewed a story of war in ancient Greece with cameos from Helen of Sparta and King Peleus of Phthia — hardly my subject matter of choice. But the book turned out to be so much more than just war and ancient gods as it followed the complex and sometimes tragic stories of Achilles and his companion Patroclus as they navigate from childhood into adulthood. There were probably a lot of references I didn’t get or even realize were references since I have absolutely no knowledge of Greek mythology; if you do get such references, you’ll probably like this book even more than I did. And if you don’t know Greek mythology, you are in good company and won’t be hindered. The deep-voiced, British male narrator of this audiobook also put on a wonderful performance which made for easy listening ;)

2. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak: READ (writing 8, pace 6, enjoyability 7)
   As previewed in last week’s post, this story is partly told from the first-person perspective of a tree, and none other than a ficus carica, which produces my all time favorite fruit: the common fig. This was done brilliantly, in a manner that was somehow both natural and whimsical and kept the story moving in such a creative way. The fig tree aids in telling us the Romeo-and-Juliet-like story of young love between a Greek boy and Turkish girl in Cyprus, an island that is torn apart by civil war. The story spans decades with perspective switching from Kostas, the Greek boy, and his future daughter Ada who grew up in London and is curious about her parents’ past. This one I preferred reading to listening, as I had a hard time understanding the fig tree narrator’s accent. But that is a me problem.