The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee

Hardcover, 304 pgs, Pub July 2nd 2015 by William Collins (HarperCollins UK), ISBN13: 9780007554836), Lit Awards: Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Memoir & Autobiography (2015)

I listened to this remarkable story, read by Josie Dunn and published by HarperCollins Publishers UK, with a degree of disbelief. Certain parts of the story agree with what I’d learned already about the lives of North Koreans, the general trend of their escapes, and their orientation in South Korea as refugees. The author was young, seventeen, when she decided to cross the frozen Yalu in winter and go see her relatives in Shenyang, China.

She’d had no idea where Shenyang was—that I actually could believe. And as a privileged (for North Korea) teen, she was accustomed to getting her way or being ignored. Certainly maps were not easily found, just as they weren’t in China, either, thirty years ago. The period in this book covers approximately 2000-2012, a period when Hyeonseo Lee spent ten years in China working then flew to South Korea to request asylum.

Her own path to freedom was relatively smooth; she’d learned to be wary of revealing much about herself from childhood and was not easily deceived. Being young and attractive gave her the benefit of the doubt in China, but she wasn’t able to escape every attempt to corral her into exploitative jobs. She lived on her wits and managed, eventually, to eventually pass as Chinese-Korean. With this identity she was able to procure a passport (and a new name). She lived in China ten years.

I don’t want to spoil the adventure for those who aren’t familiar with her story, but it is a doozy. Her family in North Korea had a good songbun (status or name) which they exploited to bring goods in from outside the country. An uncle actually sold heroin. Her mother brought in all manner of household goods and occasionally methamphetamines! Hyeonseo’s brother began doing much the same illicit and illegal import work, bribing border guards, etc. after Hyeonseo left. Apparently her departure was officially overlooked, perhaps as the result of a bribe.

The story rings true, and she’s told it so many times by now that there are all kinds of suggestive chapter endings which propel one to turn to the next chapter. Apparently Ms. Lee met with President Trump with some other defectors in the White House in January 2018 before the president’s departure to Singapore to meet Kim Jong Un. She has given many talks about her experience and that of her family, including a TED talk I have posted below.

This is a defector story you probably haven’t heard, and you might want to see what everyone is so excited about.

Below please find a 12-minute TED talk by Hyeonsan Lee:





Tweet

The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel

Hardcover, 336 pages, Pub October 10th 2017 by Harper ISBN13: 9780062322586

Apparently eighty percent of the population has some experience with infidelity, whether through a parent, spouse, friend, or family member. Considering how hurtful and destructive such urges are, it is amazing most of us are still standing. Esther Perel has distilled her years of marriage counseling and study of infidelity to reveal fascinating insights that make enormous sense to me. She tells us that

“In a surprising number of these cases, a direct line can be traced from an extramarital adventure back to our most basic human fear—the confrontation with mortality.”

I would add a corollary that if the infidel (?) one who commits infidelity didn’t fear death before they became involved in an extramarital affair, they should after, for sure.

I love the way Perel thinks. She is such an adult. When one is in the midst of handling an exposed infidelity, it is common to experience sadness, rage, jealousy, and diminished self-worth. Perel says we can feel these things if we want, it is normal, but it is probably more worthwhile to look at why one strayed, if one has the stamina for it.

In this way, one may find one prefers one’s spouse to other possibilities, and can renew their vows in a fuller knowledge of one another, and a fuller knowledge of what it takes to make a marriage succeed. One of the things I notice about marriage is that sometimes the people involved forget that the spouse is a mystery and basically unknowable; that the spouse is an independent sexual being; that affairs often allow us to discover a new self, rather than merely a new sexual partner. Oftentimes it is that new sexual self that is so entrancing, not the new partner after all, e.g., “I feel alive.”.

A couple of other things Perel points to are that we keep many secrets in a marriage, and perhaps infidelity is not the most damaging of these. She thinks that sometimes admitting to an infidelity may cause more damage than not, and one has to ask oneself what one’s motives are in revealing such a thing if it is not already discovered and is unlikely to be.

While we often hear that revenge is sweet, in fact it is frequently the opposite. There is an important lesson to know about long-lasting feelings of vengeance: “If in the process of getting even you end up hurting yourself more than you punish the other, you gain nothing.” Feelings of stress and anger can make you miserable.

Studies of romantic love discover that it is a physical addiction, similar in effect to cocaine or nicotine on the brain. Quoting Anthropologist Helen Fisher who has done fMRI studies on the brain in love: “weaning oneself off of obsessive thinking about a lost love…is akin to breaking a dependency on drugs.”

Perel defines infidelity as including one or more of three components: secrecy, sexual alchemy, and emotional involvement. Towards the end of the book she explains that although women are used to being in touch with their emotional side and the multidimensionality of their sexuality (its subjectivity, its relational character, its contextual nature, and its reliance on a delicate balance of conditions), men rarely give themselves that freedom.

There are so many myths surrounding the definition of male sexuality as being biologically imperative, uncomplicated, ever ready, and always in search of novelty but actually men and women are in fact more similar than they are different. Men may find themselves emotionally disengaging in direct proportion to the demands of their relational entanglements and the conflicting messages they are receiving about who they are and who they should be. “You don’t pay the hooker to come—you pay her to leave”—highlighting the pleasures of less emotionally complicated forms of sex.

In the end, Perel says, it is usually a lack of real sexual communication in the midst of a loud and proud declaration of emotional transparency in modern intimacy that is most at fault for a drawing away from real intimacy. A successful marriage, I’m guessing, allows some of the mystery to remain. Two individuals agree to share lives; that they can leave at any time deepens the mystery. One needn’t do it, so when we do, there must be meaning. Communication is critical. And weathering a storm can unlock a few mysteries we tend to keep hidden, even from ourselves.

“Every act of betrayal shares common features, but every experience of betrayal is unique.”

Perel has Youtube videos of her most popular talks, and she is particularly good at cutting to the heart of relationships and fingering the sore spots. Most of us can find our own situations well-represented. Her examples of couples in treatment are diverse and distinct, and very interesting. I’d say listening to her is worthwhile even if it has never entered your mind to stray.




You can buy this book here: Tweet

Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Hardcover, 338 pgs, Pub May 9th 2017 by Dey Street Books, ISBN13: 9780062390851

Maybe everyone does lie. But they don’t lie all the time. Stephens-Davidowitz makes the good point that asking people directly doesn’t always, in fact may not often, yield true answers. People have their own reasons for answering pollsters untruthfully, but it is clear that this is a documented fact. People sometimes lie to pollsters.

Stephens-Davidowitz was told by mentors and advisors not to consider Google searches worthwhile data, but the more he looked at it, the more he was convinced that Google searches contained the best data for determining what people are concerned about. He has uncovered some interesting trends that are not apparent through direct questioning because people are sometimes ashamed of their fears, feelings, prejudices, and predilections.

This book was better read rather than listened to, though the production by HarperAudio and the narrator, Tim Andres Pabon, were excellent. Stephens-Davidowitz gives charts, graphs, data points that obviously cannot be represented in the audio version. These usually help me to grasp things easily and maybe bypass pages of material that is not as interesting to me. It wasn’t that his material was hard, it was that I oftentimes did not like what he was talking about. He had a tendency to focus on deviant behavior, e.g., sexual predators, abuse, porn, etc. One might make the argument that these behaviors are important to understand and therefore worth looking at. Possibly. However, if ‘everybody lies,’ one might make the argument that we do not have to look at deviance to find untruthfulness.

What we discover is that to test Stephens-Davidowitz’s thesis that ‘everybody lies,’ we have to spend quite a lot of time with statistics and creating studies, which is fine. Stephens-Davidowitz argues that 'big data' is the source of the insights, not the insights themselves. This is kind of important and may overlooked. The true point he makes about lying is that big data probably irons out discrepancies in the reasons for our Google searches, e.g., that it is not me that is interested in the herpes virus, it is my brother, because in the end it doesn’t matter why we did the search; what matters is that we did the search. Besides, maybe I’m lying about my brother having the virus, but my interest in the topic is not a lie.

Stephens-Davidowitz has made a career so far out of the study of big data, showing us ways to slice and dice it so that it is useful to our view of the world. Only thing is, I am not as interested in what big data tells us as he is. He’d trained as an economist, and towards the end of the book he hit a couple of areas I did find more interesting, like the notion of regression discontinuity, a term used to describe a statistical tool created to measure the outcomes of people very close to some arbitrary cut-off.** S-D talks about using this tool on federal inmates, discovering criminals treated more harshly committed more crimes upon their release. But S-D also studied students on either side of the admissions cut-off for the prestigious Stuyvesant High School: those who attended Stuyvesant did not have a significant performance difference in later life than students who did not.

Apparently Stephens-Davidowitz went into data science because of Freakonomics, the bestselling book by Steven D. Levitt. He believes that many of the next generation of scientists in every field will be data scientists. I did finish the audiobook, another study he took note of in the last pages. Apparently few readers finish ‘treatises’ by economists. He believes this is his big contribution to our knowledge base, and there is no doubt his contrariness did highlight ways big data can be used effectively.

If I may be so bold, I might be able to suggest a reason why many female readers may not be as interested in the material presented, or in Stephens-Davidowitz himself (he was/is apparently looking for a girlfriend). Stay away from the deviant sex stuff, Seth. It may interest you but I can guarantee that fewer women are going to find that appealing or reassuring conversation material.

An interesting corollary to this economists’ data view is the question of whether the truth matters, which is how I came to pick up this book. Recently on PBS’ The Third Rail with Ozy, Carlos Watson asked whether the truth matters. At first blush the answer seems obvious, and two sides debated this question. One side said of course truth matters…but most of us know one man’s truth to be another man’s lie. The other side said ‘everybody lies.’ It got me to thinking…I do think the two ways of coming to the notion of lying dovetail at some point, and one has to conclude that truth may not matter as much as we think. What matters is what we believe to be true.

Finally, it appears Stephens-Davidson agrees to some degree with Cathy O'Neill, author of Weapons of Math Destruction, in that he agrees you best not let algorithms run without human tweaking and interference. The best outcomes are delivered when humans apply their particular observations and knowledge and expertise along with big data.


** S-D describes it this way:

“Any time there is precise number that divides people into two different groups, a discontinuity, economists can compare, or regress, the outcomes of people very very close to the cut off.”

You can buy this book here: Tweet

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Hardcover, 464 pgs. Pub February 28th 2017 by Balzer + Bray, isbn13: 9780062498533

What do people talk about when we talk about race? This remarkable debut YA novel reflects the mindset and confusion of a sixteen-year-old African American girl, Starr, who witnesses up-close-and-personal a police shooting one of her childhood friends, Khalil. Starr lives in a black neighborhood, Garden Heights, but attends a private mostly-white high school an hour away from her home. Her relationship with her white schoolmates becomes a feature of the story.

The clever way Thomas sets up her character list allows us to experience Starr’s own disappointment and dislocation when Khalil is described as a drug dealer gang member to make the cop look less guilty in the eyes of the community. Thomas is especially good at describing a case that is not so completely clear that we can do without the officer’s testimony, but it soon emerges that his explanation, that he thought he was in danger, may have been because he saw a[n unarmed] black man and was afraid.

The YA nature of the material is useful to Thomas’ purpose because young people are not as close-lipped and cautious as adults and haven’t completely formed their worldview. Starr is still learning how the world works and she can be a little naïve and verbalize her learning experiences, and talk them over with her family and friends. We hear the things she is thinking, the things that bother her, the things she ultimately believes.

We can hear her discuss in an utterly realistic way one’s first impressions when confronted with her father’s own prison time, Khalil’s drug sales, Devante’s consideration of gang membership. Extenuating circumstances in each of these situations completely change our view of events and make readers realize how important perspective is when considering lifestyle and crime. Starr’s mother wants to leave the neighborhood for the suburbs to escape the drama and death of Garden Heights but Starr’s father refuses. This particular argument I have been waiting years to hear reasonably articulated, and Thomas does it well.

A new film, Get Out , was just released this month, directed by Jason Peele, a comedian who made his name as one of the Comedy Central duo Key & Peele. The work of these two bi-racial comedians focuses on how white folks are perceived by black folks, and black culture. Their work is funny, not mean, and meant to educate through humor. Thomas does something similar, with Starr articulating those micro aggressions she sustained at school, and with the police…but she is also able to articulate the assumptions, jealousy, and misunderstanding of Starr’s black friends about her opportunities outside of the neighborhood. This is all very well done: pointed but inoffensive.

Thomas says “I want to write the way Tupac Shakur raps”, her title coming from one of Tupac’s torso tattoos. She manages to include an enormous amount of nuance and expression into this novel without making it seem overdone. She throws a lot at us in a short time, giving our emotions a workout. She’d give TV writer and producer Shonda Rhimes a run for her money. Thomas’ characters are realistic if not completely developed, certainly not mere stereotypes. Thomas is helped in her portrayals by an extremely talented narrator for the audiobook, Bahni Turpin, whose proficiency with voices and accents goes far beyond the ordinary. The audiobook is an excellent choice for this material, produced by HarperAudio. Below find an excerpt.

I am not a fan of the more talky aspects of YA novels, and I was horrified with the school fight Starr was involved in, and Seven’s tendency to think first of throwing his black body physically against the forces that subjugate him, whether they be a gang leader or a white cop. This is definitely not in my experience and I’m not sad about that. Unfortunately I suspect it was an accurate depiction of how things get resolved in Garden Heights, though Starr's fight happened in the private school. This can’t be a useful habit to carry forward, but these incidents were not adequately editorialized in the novel.

I will, however, admit to being completely impressed with the skill with which Thomas composed her story. She packed in a great deal of human experience on both sides of the color divide and helps readers come to terms with a very difficult and important topic: police intimidation, excessive force, and shootings of unarmed black males. At the same time, she invites us to look at her life, the culture in the neighborhood, and the thought processes of folks who make choices different from white folks in the suburbs.

With literature like this, we get clues to how we can get to know each other better, considering the historic segregation of schools and neighborhoods. Racism, conscious or unconscious, is no longer acceptable to the majority of Americans. It should have ended long ago—by law it had, in practice it has not. Everyone who hasn’t studied up on what this means, can use books like these to make inroads into a greater awareness. Study up. Society is moving ahead. Many artists of color are going out of their way to light the road and explain these issues clearly from their point of view.

The book has been optioned for a film, purportedly with “The Hunger Games” actress Amandla Stenberg to star.





You can buy this book here: Tweet

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

A twitter storm this summer brought this book to my attention. I read several articles and interviews with Vance before managing to get my hands on a copy of the book. That circuitous introduction led me to expect some kind of treatise on working class attitudes, so at first I experienced the work through the distorting lens of others’ interpretations.

This book is not any kind of treatise. It is a brave, funny, unsentimental growing-up story, introducing us to a cussin’ gun-brandishing grandmaw who knew instilling accountability and backbone was the best way out of hill country. But when the time came for young Vance to leave via induction into the Marines, grandmaw was reluctant to let him go. She probably wasn’t sure that he’d live long enough to get that college degree she wanted for him.

Mawmaw sounds like a very special person, with her sometimes conservative, sometimes liberal political thought. She didn’t take anything as creed, except the hillbilly creed. That lack of credulousness, that lack of naiveté is something we should all aim for. It is the road to a well-informed, sophisticated citizenry. Wouldn’t she be surprised to know we are thinking of her now. Wish I’d met her.

J.D. Vance is an avowed conservative, but he has some of that “thinking for himself” thing going on. When he was young he turned to the church for answers, and while the church gave him some answers and some help, he could see that it wasn’t going to be the whole answer. “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s what I learned also...the hard way.

While I find myself on the other side of the political spectrum from Vance’s self-described “far right” position as that spectrum is defined in common parlance, I can listen to him enunciate his thinking without having a coronary because he clearly thinks about his opinions and would probably listen to mine, if I am reasonable, and focussed on a solution that is fair and do-able. He is as entitled to his opinions as I am. I believe he is recommending thoughtfulness, openness, creativity, and a willingness to compromise. I suppose he is ultimately headed to political office. His favorite job in college was the state senate, after all.

In a way, this bare-all, plainspoken memoir reminds me of Obama’s family history, Dreams from my Father, that Obama wrote before his big political push. You can’t talk behind the back of a man who has told you the worst already. I wish everyone was able to be so frank with us, but let’s admit that not everyone has the writing skill to pull this off. Vance is in his early thirties and freely admits he does not have all the answers to joblessness and hopelessness in hillbilly country, but he is one of the few conservatives who appear to give a damn.

It is important to note that Vance is better at presenting a balanced, less objectionable point of view in writing. In a book interview on PBS Newshour, Vance said that Trump was one of the few people who “cared” about the plight of poor working class. I think that can be challenged on a number of fronts. There have been public policies put in place in the past thirty years after all, even if they haven’t worked well in practice.

When asked, in that same PBS interview, about Clinton’s “basket of deplorables,” Vance says “a lot of these folks are just really hard-working people…” I don’t understand. He spent most of the book telling us that in fact, “white working class” meant hardly working. They have reasons for their disaffection, but the solutions are in community, family, and values, none of which necessarily have much to do with money.

As it happens, I also believe in community, family, and values despite not agreeing with practically anything else on the agenda of the “far right.” I agree with Vance that attacking political leaders for things that are demonstrably untrue (e.g., birtherism) has fomented an unhealthy distrust of government. The press has an important role to play in challenging power, but intentionally creating suspicion helps no one. Vance agrees that conservatives need to do a better job in healing the country and bringing folks together rather than pushing them apart.

Republicans desperately need a rational spokesman, and Vance has put himself up for the job. For a political party that has so lost its moral compass, this man must bring great hope. He has something he cares deeply about, knows something about, and knows how to go about trying to find solutions. Broken family ties is a subject we all need to think about whether black, white, rich, or poor. Rich people have broken families as well, with equally devastating consequences. Hopelessness and despair of ever being able to turn one’s life around—this is something rich folks can share if they, too, are addicts. But learned helplessness and the lack of social capital--that is something rich people do not share.

There is a great deal to discuss in this book, including Amy Chua's advice in law school that Vance not pursue the most prestigious and shiniest job in the basket of opportunities, and how the lives of poor inner-city blacks may parallel and reflect the lives of hillbilly whites. I think we can all be part of this conversation. I believe that is why he started it.

J.D. Vance gives a TED talk (September 2016)

I listened to this book read by the author and produced by HarperAudio. The author read a little too fast as this material was new to me and required thinking as well as listening, but it is still a worthwhile way to gain access to this remarkable personal history.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Harper Lee’s second published novel confirms once and for all that Harper Lee was the writer we all thought she was when To Kill a Mockingbird became a worldwide success. Considering the period during which this novel was written, the arguments Lee places in the mouths of her characters seem as dangerous as a torch of oil-soaked rags burning hot in an airless Southern night, both for and against basic civil rights for black people.

The voice in this novel is distinct enough never to be mistaken for another, and the pleasure we derive from the stories liberally spiced with Southern wit and reminiscence…Jean Louise learning about sex, the morning coffee for neighbor women, or Scout wearing falsies to her first dance…make us want to laugh and weep that there is so little of Lee’s writing to enjoy. Watching Jean Louise take her first steps as an independent adult and see what it means to be a family member and a Southerner in a time of unequal rights is revelatory and beautifully clear.

In a time when authors find themselves hiding their meanings within complicated storylines and off-kilter personalities, this story and its thrust comes across as clear, powerful, and very close to perfect. Yes, its arguments may seem dated, but they certainly weren’t in the mid-50s when this novel was written, and considering race relations in the U.S. currently, we could all use a little look back at how little many of us have progressed in sixty years. Could it be that we just don’t listen to any voices that don’t accord with our own? Jean Louise’s Uncle Jack tells us we don’t have to try and understand, but then we won’t grow. Ah, there it is.

No matter how many times it has been written that this book preceded To Kill a Mockingbird in its genesis, but was refused by Lee’s editor, reviewers have persisted in calling it a sequel. And no matter that this book contains keys to important concepts many of us have never understood, e.g., a credible explanation for how individual Southern soldiers viewed America’s Civil War, and how reasonable men can disagree on something so fundamental as civil rights for all people, reviewers persist in voicing their indignation over the attitudes of a fictional lawyer. If the reaction to this book is any indication of how her first work was received, it is no wonder she never wanted to publish another novel: “I would not go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money,” she told a close friend.

This is a novel about growing up and learning to reconcile painful truths about the world. Lee’s meaning couldn’t be clearer, since she puts her arguments in the mouths of learned and articulate people and has precious little plot or character ornamentation to obscure her arguments. Some have called this bald sermonizing. To me it was a balm. The arguments surrounding race relations are so fraught that someone stating straight out what their issues are aids clarity and understanding, even if distinctions are still fine and complicated enough to make me weak with relief that I don’t have to read this book in translation, or in a language not my own.

I really can’t understand the twisted-mouth criticism of this novel. Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker (July 27th edition) calls the novel “touching, beautiful…and magically alive,” though heavily hyped. It was so hyped I became suspicious of its value as literature before I read it. Considering the success of Harper Lee’s first novel and her reclusiveness in the years since, a new book from her really is an event to be celebrated. Look what happened this summer leading up to Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Purity. You’d think his book was a miracle instead of one from a popular writer in the middle of his career. The American marketing machine cannot be accused of shrinking from their god-given right to make money anyway they can.

I listened to this novel read by Reese Witherspoon whose southern accent gave the novel a charming verisimilitude. And listening to Jean Louise’s Uncle Jack at the end help her integrate what she’d learned during her stay in Maycomb was grace itself.

Don’t let any reviews discourage you from enjoying this novel for yourselves. It is a wonderful, spicy, clear-eyed view of the South with all its peculiarities. A better defense of color-blindness I have not heard.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

A favorable review today in The New York Times said Jess Walter’s new book is like a film script, but to my way of thinking Walter is more like a one-man performance artist, who suddenly pulls all kinds of horns, drums, bells and other props out of his bottomless pockets to illustrate a point, to make us laugh, to break into our attention and to declare: “are we entirely mad?” His work is brilliantly interpreted and performed by Edoardo Ballerini on audio, and to hear the thick and heavy tones of Richard Burton declaiming in a small outboard floating off the coast of Italy is to feel a stab of remembered joy.

Fifteen years from conception to production, this is Walter at his crazy, mad, funny, piercing best, for he skewers us and our lives by reflecting popular culture back at ourselves, but showers us with tender mercies at the end. The novel covers a time frame from the early sixties through at least the last decade, and covers at least as many personalities as years. But what a wild and happy party it is, with all the usual suspects: love, greed, envy, pride, lust, infidelity…and, I’ll say it again, finally love. “It’s a love story,” we hear as Hollywood producer Michael Deane pitches his latest to the studio executives at the end of the book. And I guess it always is, in the end, for that is all that really matters.

Take this trip, and if you have eschewed listening on audio for whatever reason, throw aside your inhibitions and do yourself a favor. This is performance art, and may be listened to with great effect. We have a nubile Hollywood actress with a bit part in an Elizabeth Taylor film, a Hollywood producer, a small Italian coastal village, a young man pitching a story…you get the idea. There is lots going on but it always with the greatest clarity that we can see that life ”isn’t always easy” and that we usually find our hapless ways despite, or perhaps because of, our questionable choices.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The wars of Troy bring home the myth of Achilles, the greatest warrior the world has ever known. Achilles died in Troy, but it was his intervention that ended that long, tortuous conflict begun to return Helen to her husband Menelaus when she was stolen by Paris of Troy. As one might expect, the old story apparently has more than one interpretation, and Miller takes advantage of these discrepancies to make the story her own.

I listened to the audiofile of this book very ably narrated by Frazer Douglas, and enjoyed the oral storytelling tradition long heralded by mythmakers. Miller’s story starts slowly, developing the loving relationship between Patroclus and Achilles, and builds to the Trojan War and Achilles’ final end. Truthfully, I could have done with a greatly truncated romantic introduction, but I am sure this added to the appeal of the book for some, and gave doubters time to lose their inhibitions about reading of ancient times.

One is awash in familiar names by the end of the story, which feels very modern and accessible. Intimate details about Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Hector makes the book live. This is entirely appropriate as these myths are meant to live and we should be reminded of them again and again as they still tell us of human greed, goodness, and greatness. I must say, however, that I will never again think of Achilles without imagining a young Brad Pitt as our hero, for he took the role of Achilles in the 2004 movie Troy and Madeline Miller’s descriptions mirror Pitt’s lavish gifts admirably.

This book has won the 2012 Orange Prize, a UK cash prize awarded for originality, excellence and accessibility in fiction by women.


You can buy this book here: Tweet