A Song For Ella Grey

A Song For Ella Grey by David Almond, 268 pages

This book is a modern day retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Orpheus is still Orpheus but Eurydice is Ella.  The story is told from the point of view of Ella’s best friend, Claire.  They are in the senior year of high school when Claire and her friends meet Orpheus, who makes music that is out of this world.  They forget themselves, the birds stop singing, the wildlife sits and listens, the wind stops blowing.  But Orpheus falls in love with Ella.  Anyone who has read the myth knows how the story ends, basically, but it is well written and the characters are very real.  A great teen read.

Art of Living

The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness by Epictetus, translated by Sharon Lebell, 113 pages

Epictetus was a Stoic philosopher and rhetor of the early 2nd century.  Born a slave, by the time of his death he was widely known and respected - amongst his admirers were the Emperor Hadrian and the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius.  His lectures were reconstructed by his disciple Flavius Arrian as The Discourses, which originally consisted of eight books (four survive).  The Enchiridion ("Handbook" or "Manual") is a distillation of Epictetus' teachings into a set of brief lessons, designed for an audience that would be bored or confused by the full Discourses.

This is the starting point for Lebell's translation of this classic - to render Epictetus in language that appeals to a mass audience.  Purists should not be too offended - despite the occasional lapse into the vulgarity of self-help jargon, Lebell generally accurately captures the meaning of the original.  Certainly, she doesn't attempt to soften Epictetus' message that the "good life" is a life spent in continual pursuit of the good, which means a life of rigorous virtue and detachment from worldly pleasures.

An easy introduction to a great classical philosopher.

Beauty’s Daughter

Beauty’s Daughter by Carolyn Meyer, 337 pages

This is the story of Hermione, daughter of Helen of Troy and King Menelaus.  Hermione is always told that she looks exactly like her father but she knows that what everyone means is that she looks nothing like her mother.  When Helen is taken by Paris, Hermione follows her father to Troy to try to retrieve her mother.  We see Hermione’s life in a war encampment and follow their voyage back home, her subsequent unwilling marriage to Achilles’s son, Pyrrhus, and her quest to find love again with her childhood sweetheart and cousin, Orestes.  This is a good story with enough adventure to satisfy, although the book concentrates more on Hermione’s relationships, with her friends (female and male), her parents, and her lovers.  Although the overall book is based on the events surrounding the Trojan War, little was ever written about Hermione so most of that part of the story is made up by Meyer.  It’s a satisfying story and a good book for teens that enjoy historical fiction or books about the Greek myths.