I started and finished A Sense of Direction in one evening; I couldn't really stop thinking about it, so I couldn't put it down. I found it...
Continue »
Mary Renault is my all-time favorite author. I say that without reservation or qualification. I'm recommending The King Must Die here, but it could just as easily be The Persian Boy or The Last of the Wine or Fire from Heaven or any of her other works. She writes of times far removed from ours (ancient Greece, Sparta, and the worlds Alexander the Great conquered), and we LIVE in those times with her characters. Renault has the ability to talk through her characters and make their lives and hopes and concerns clear to us in spite of differences in cultures and societies and beliefs. We feel what they feel, we understand the things that drive them or cripple them as if we were actual observers in their lives. One of the reasons I read novels is to give me the opportunity to "be" someone other than myself, if only briefly: Mary Renault makes a world miles and centuries removed from mine become almost more comfortable and familiar than the one I actually come back to when I put her books down.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
Don't Miss
Customer Comments
dream521 has commented on (1) product.
The King Must Die by Mary Renault
dream521, September 7, 2011
Mary Renault is my all-time favorite author. I say that without reservation or qualification. I'm recommending The King Must Die here, but it could just as easily be The Persian Boy or The Last of the Wine or Fire from Heaven or any of her other works. She writes of times far removed from ours (ancient Greece, Sparta, and the worlds Alexander the Great conquered), and we LIVE in those times with her characters. Renault has the ability to talk through her characters and make their lives and hopes and concerns clear to us in spite of differences in cultures and societies and beliefs. We feel what they feel, we understand the things that drive them or cripple them as if we were actual observers in their lives. One of the reasons I read novels is to give me the opportunity to "be" someone other than myself, if only briefly: Mary Renault makes a world miles and centuries removed from mine become almost more comfortable and familiar than the one I actually come back to when I put her books down.