Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey - a retelling of Jane Eyre set in 1950's Scotland. I was highly prejudiced against this one from the start, since I've never (gasp) liked Jane Eyre. So I was a bit annoyed at the beginning, but I did get well sucked in and started enjoying myself around the time she got to boarding school. But the cause of the rift with Mr. Sinclair seemed really contrived, to me, and the book started losing me there. Then Gemma went and did something totally hypocritical, and the ending felt a little rushed and forced from there. I would have 4 starred it until the Sinclair issue, but it really lost me in the end. Only 2 stars from me.
Calico Joe by John Grisham - really enjoyed this. Fun, fast read that really picks up the excitement of a baseball fanboy.
Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - was based on the Iliad. If you've read it, do you remember when Patroclus gets killed and Achilles goes absolutely insane with grief and kills everything that moves? Well, Homer never really explained Achilles' emotional response, so Miller offers her own version. I was occasionally annoyed at the (over)use of descriptive turns of phrase ("his skin smelled of fresh-pressed olive oil" -wtf??), but was able to forgive it due to the obvious homage to Homer ("and rosy-fingered Dawn stretched across the sky"). I've read reviews criticizing Patroclus' hero-worship of Achilles, but I'd argue that that is also homage to the genre, after all, the book *is* titled Song of Achilles. The ghost thing at the end was a bit weird for me, but also was culturally appropriate to the Greeks. All in all, stands up to reading by Classics-geeks, for sure. Perhaps my only question is whether it can survive reading by those who haven't studied the Iliad...?
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