TBR Jar Review: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault

This was the latest pick from out of my TBR Jar, and while I did mostly enjoy it, it is another one of those books that ended up on my TBR list, without a “proper” reason. For a while I had one of those “read this next” books that list a number of books for different topics and I added a whole lot of those books to my TBR, even though they maybe weren’t what I would normally go for. But I am all for reading out of my comfort zone, so for most of the books I want to give them a try, even though they might not be my first choice. This was definitely one of those books. 

This book takes place in ancient Athens at the time of Socrates. The main protagonist is a young man named Alexias, who is part of the wealthier population of the city. We hear about him training to become an athlete and the troubles he has with his family. He meets Lysis, a young man who takes him under his wings and they become lovers. The Peloponnesian war is still going strong and Alexias is called to his military service early, but luckily he serves under Lysis and their relationships develops. The rest of the book pretty much consists of athletic games, sieges, expeditions and war. 

There is not really an overarching plot line aside from the life of Alexias, and I often felt like there was something missing, like the plot wasn’t leading to anything in particular and it just plodded along. This was especially so in the last half of the book, where I got kind of bored with the steady advancement. 

The characters were interesting, but due to the writing style I feel like I often missed something. People would hint at things and say “such things are not spoken of” but it was expected that you as a reader understood from the vague hints. Sometimes I would think I got it and sometimes not. Most of the hints concerned sexual matters (I think!! I’m not very good at interpreting hints…) and this meant that especially the relationship between Lysis and Alexias was a bit confusing for me. As I said above the book states that they are lovers, but that could mean something different in ancient Athens. I believe it was very normal for men to have a younger “lover” whom they take care of and maybe even have an actual physical relationship with, but eventually they would marry a woman (or girl). 

The writing was generally good and I enjoyed reading the book for the most part. But whenever sexual matters, politics or philosophy was talked about those vague hints would come out and it would often go over my head. So there might have been some things I have missed out on. 

I gave this book 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads. Mainly because I enjoyed the writing style and the relationship between Lysis and Alexias, or at least what I understood of it. 

The next pick from my TBR Jar is “The Sky is Everywhere” by Jandy Nelson. It seems interesting and I’ve heard good things about it. I have read “I’ll Give You the Sun” by Nelson and I enjoyed that book, so I have good hopes for this one.