An account of a turbulent period in Greek history, told from the viewpoint of one of the last Greek poets in the Homeric tradition. Mary Renault weaves a story that feels real and as if we are observing history as it happens. I first read this shortly after it was first published and it was one of those books that left me wanting to know more about the time in which it was set. Coming back to it thirty years later it still makes me feel the same way. ( )

It's been years since I read Mary Renault. It was actually joining LT that made me realize I hadn't read this one. I needed to finish all her Greek books, so I went right out and found it.

Was I let down because it's been so long? Have I changed a lot in the last few years? Or is this really as dull as it seemed to me?

This is one of those books where I kept expecting something big to happen and it never did. Simonides is an appealing character who has a difficult childhood and becomes successful in the profession he was born for: lyric poetry (he's a Homeric bard).

Now this seemed like a great topic for Renault to tackle. But I guess I wanted more fighting and intrigue. Simonides sings of the great deeds of the legendary heroes. He refers to them in his narrative and his daily speech. But his own great deeds are pretty pedestrian. He composes poems and music, performs, wins accolades, eats well, sleeps soundly, enjoys his time with women who are desirable, but not too exciting.

Maybe this is Renault's idea of a happy life. Maybe she saw herself as the bard who has been able to achieve her heart's desire. The only thing she didn't have was the interesting times Simonides lived in. ( )

This book was a re-read, I feel sure, since I was hooked on her stuff in the Seventies...yet I felt curiously unfamiliar with the book. I recalled some scenes, such as Simonides returning from home to rejoin his master Kleobis in their Samian exile; I found a lot of the book to be less clear in my mind than most I've read before and choose to re-read.

I put this down to the fact that as I was reading it in 1978 or 1979, I was disappointed that the main character wasn't gay and wasn't even very excitingly drawn. (Can you tell I was a youth who loved the Alexander novels, The Bull from the Sea, The King Must Die, The Persian Boy? Especially The Persian Boy, quite salacious!)

But, in the end, as a fifty-year-old who's tastes have matured (ha), I liked this book quite a lot. It was a lovely tale of how the world has always judged others by their looks and not their deeds or talents. It presents itself as a harmless historical novel, and examines human nature minutely, unsparingly, and with what can only be called a jaundiced eye. Renault was clearly irritated at the follies of mankind. It shows in such lines as this, spoken by Simonides in his old age: "I have never desired young maids, preferrinig ripe fruit to green; maybe it is because I feared their laughter when I was a boy." (p262, Pantheon hardcover edition 1978)

Still scared of the masses. Still subject to the fears and foibles of youth. Wiser? Renault is too good a writer to make you take her view. She tells her story, and leaves you to take her meanings.

Sheer pleasure, friends, and all too seldom met, when a storyteller trusts you to read, and read again, and reach your own conclusions. Read it and conclude, and you won't be sorry. ( )

A fictionalised account of the life of the poet Simonides, and his observations of the fall of the Peisistratids, The Praise Singer is a vivid, solid read. While not the best of Renault's books, and perhaps of most interest to those who are students of Greek history and who know in advance the story of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, I still found the directness of story-telling to be very engaging. Renault has the knack of making a compelling and human story out of the twists and turns of Classical Greek politics, and if this is the kind of historical fiction you're interested in, it's well worth the read. ( )

Simonides, growing up as the ugly second son of a strict father on austere Keos, makes songs to amuse himself and begins to dream about an escape. It arrives in the form of a travelling bard who takes Simonides as his pupil. Little by little, Simonides learns more, witnesses tyranny in Samos, settles in Euboia and gains favour in Athens with Pisistratos and his sons, Hippias and Hipparchos.

As Renault points out in her afterword, we don't know that much about Simonides but this first-person account feels fresh and alive. ( )