Black Ships Before Troy

Rosemary Sutcliff (author)

Frances Lincoln Children's Books, UK: 1993; 140pp

ISBN: 9781845078270

Genres: adventure, historical fiction, myth

Issues: alliances, family, friendship, loyalty, values, war

Note: extension vocabulary

Well respected for her historical fiction for children, Rosemary Sutcliff's work invariably combines thorough research, strong stories and magnificent language. 'Black Ships Before Troy' is no exception.

It tells the story of the beautiful Helen, wife of Menelaus, who leaves her husband to go with Paris, prince of Troy. Menelaus and his allies, including heroes such as Hercules, Achilles and Odysseus, lay siege to Troy for nearly ten years, a war that drags on partly due to human stubbornness and partly due to the involvement of the gods themselves.

In concise and eloquent writing Sutcliff has created a very readable retelling of Homer's Iliad, one of the greatest works of literature of all time. What is particularly wonderful is how Sutcliff has maintained some significant elements of the original. Homer's work is in the oral tradition and consequently uses certain rhythmic and narrative devices that are rarely found in today's literature. Sutcliff has, for example, included some of the more significant descriptive phrases relating to various characters. Helen, when making a major entrance or interacting with a main character, is usually referred to as ‘Helen of the Fair Cheeks'; the goddess of wisdom is almost always called ‘grey-eyed Athene'; the father of the gods is ‘Zeus the Thunderer'.

Gifted readers will delight in the poetic formality of the phrasing and vocabulary - ‘And they set out, prowling like a pair of hunting lions through the darkness and the scattered bodies of the dead.'The adventure is as fresh and exciting as it would have been when first told to an audience in Homer's time - here are noble (and not so noble) heroes, great loves and greater loyalties.

Younger readers will find this an excellent and reasonably accurate introduction to an ancient work and should be then encouraged to attempt the original (in translation, obviously!) What is particularly noticeable is that, as with the original, Sutcliff's unbiased commentary on the various combatants and their actions passes judgement not on them but on war itself.

Sutcliff, as did Homer, grieves for the waste of great men's lives in battles over small things such as pride and possession.