Arcadian Days
Does the world really need another retelling of the classic Greek myths? When it comes from renowned historical novelist John Spurling, the answer has to be an emphatic yes. Arcadian Days is the follow-up to Arcadian Nights (2016) and tells the captivating stories of five male-female pairs: Prometheus and Pandora, Jason and Medea, Oedipus and Antigone, Achilles and Thetis, and Odysseus and Penelope.
Spurling, who won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2015 for The Ten Thousand Things, was born in 1936. The Kenyan-English playwright and author has written 35 plays and seven books. Arcadian Days and its predecessor come from a deep love of Greece, where he has owned a house since 2006. Sadly, those Arcadian days and nights are in the past, thanks to old age, Brexit, and Covid-19. Still, the author introduces each section with a conversational air, holding the reader’s hand like a genial professor.
My personal favourite is Odysseus and Penelope, having myself pored over the myth and visited the ‘wine-dark’ seas of modern-day Ithaca on many occasions. Spurling gives Odysseus a new lease on life by using the first person and letting the hero speak for himself on his eventful journey from Ithaca to Troy and back again, a danger-filled voyage which took him 20 years. However, I was glad to have read Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) to get the female perspective.
Spurling brings a unique voice to these familiar stories, which have inspired writers and artists for thousands of years. These myths, beloved of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides may be well-known but, in Spurling’s hands, they have a freshness about them that makes them well worth revisiting.
