The Golden Mean

Thoroughly average. I felt as if Lyon did far too much to attempt to make Aristotle modern and relatable, and the sex, gore, and incessant cursing were entirely overdone. Read for Arcadia course in Greece.

An interesting, quick read about Alexander the Great who is tutored by Aristotle. Character driven, leisurely pacing. Really. brings these people to life

Philosophy is not an interest of mine, so I think that soured the novel for me. I just kept getting frustrated with the restrictions of the historical plot and the silliness of some of the beliefs of the ancient Greeks.

An engaging novel told from the point of view of Aristotle - as he was hired to tutor Alexander before he became "the Great." Evokes the Greek / Macedonian world, bringing history to life. Worthwhile.

Annabel Lyon takes us back to ancient times with this tale of Aristotle and Alexander. As I was reading this book I kept thinking of Mary Renault's book, Fire from Heaven. Sure enough, in the acknowledgments section, Fire from Heaven is mentioned. However, this is a more cerebral treatment plus it is told from Aristotle's point of view.

Aristotle is presented as suffering from an unnamed mental condition that sounds like bipolar disorder. Lyon isn't the first person to speculate this but it does give an interesting perspective to the foundations of Western philosophy.

I thought the writing was wonderful:
p. 264
Go still at sundown and you can hear the earth itself humming. The ground stays warm long into the night; strange-familiar faces smile up at us from the fields; the stars are a splash of silver liquid across the sky, a spill pattern as familiar as the stains on my mother's kitchen table.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to think about what they read. If you're looking for a less philosophical treatment of the same time period, try out Mary Renault.

I really really liked this book. It charmed me. I think it will be one of those novels you either instinctively warm to or you just don't 'get'. Your appreciation of it may also be affected by how much prior knowledge you have of Aristotle and Aristotelian thought.
We discussed at my book group and those of us who loved it were in the minority. Some found it surprisingly thin on philosophy; some disliked the flashing backwards and forwards and found it difficult to follow; some found Aristotle difficult to get to know and unemotional (for me, that was the whole point to his character - something on the autism scale as we would say today).
For me, it wasn't about world events or even philosophy, despite the book's title suggesting that the focus is on Aristotle's 'happy medium' approach to life. Yes, that is covered and comes into play. But, for me, essentially, the book is a portrait of a man and how he sees and interacts with the people in his life.

While Annabel Lyon’s much-acclaimed novel The Golden Mean, has been received well by critics, I’m afraid it fell short for this reader.

The novel deals with Aristotle’s life during his tutelage of Alexander, who would become The Great. Lyon attempts to paint a picture of Aristotle’s own struggle to find balance between depression and joy, passion and reason, and in doing so employs a considerable wealth of research into the historical characters.

However, research into the historical milieu is lacking. In the opening Lyon’s describes:

“I spent yesterday on the carts myself so I could write, though now I ride bareback, in the manner of my countrymen, a ball-busting proposition for someone who’s been sedentary as long as I have.”

Agreed riding bare-back can be a painful experience over the long-term; however, the glaring inconsistency here is the fact Aristotle was writing while riding in a cart. In an era of no suspension, and roughly paved or even dirt roads, the jouncing and ‘ball-busting’ would have had his backside black and blue, and any writing would have been rendered illegible. Further, Lyon fails to illustrate that if paper (papyrus) were used, or more likely parchment or vellum, all would have required sanding and burnishing, tasks not easily accomplished on a bouncing, crashing cart. Moreover, use of any stylus and ink would have been prohibitive. If, however, a wax tablet had been used, which would have been more likely the case, even then any legible cipher would have been an impossibility.

The language of the novel was another point of contention for me. Altogether very modern, even to the use of the modern phrase, whapping each other upside the head, the language of the novel didn’t ring true, and consequently a sense of time period and placement left me feeling disoriented. I wasn’t looking for Shakespearean diction here; far from it. But I was looking for something a little less modern street.

Around the middle of the novel that modern touch became completely arresting when Lyons writes a scene wherein he and his wife watch snow falling, and Aristotle explains to his wife:

“The gods don’t send it,” I say. “It’s part of the machinery of the world. When the air is cold enough, rain turns to snow. It freezes. The water atoms attach to each other and harden.”

Now, while Democritus, one of the ancient Greek philosophers credited with the concept of atomic theory, was a contemporary of Aristotle’s, the statement Lyon’s writes reads just a bit too modern and stretches the boundaries of credibility.

As to the tone of the language, it is altogether very vulgar, which may be an attempt to reflect a male voice. Instead, at least for this reader, that vulgar tone simply rendered the novel somewhat adolescent and reliant on the use of shock factor instead of writing skill.

When analyzing writing skill, there is a profound lack of character development, so that Aristotle himself is merely a talking head, as are most of the enormous cast of characters. There’s nothing there for me to hang on to. And that lack of character development extends to lack of environmental detail, so that what should have been a very alive, vibrant, sensory plunge into ancient Greece and Macedon, instead remain a grey slate waiting for colour. There was no sense of heat or cold, of architecture or furnishing, of environment or countryside. The only explicit detail Lyon ever uses is that of periodic, clinical gore, or base sexuality.

It may be that this sensory deprivation was Lyon’s attempt to reflect the lack of depth and character in her protagonist, Aristotle, but for me it was like reading a green screen, waiting for the magic to appear.

If Lyon’s novel, The Golden Mean, is the standard by which we now measure excellence, then I am outdated, antiquated and obsolete.

I'm still thinking about this book. After reading the other reviews of this book I can say that I agree with all of them. I picked up this book because I like historical fiction and am always interested in Greek and Roman stories after reading The Golden Ass by Apuleius, The King Must Die by Mary Renault and other modern and and classical works. If these sources are correct they were a pretty "vulgar and licentious" story and "fine balance between thought provoking sophistication and gritty humanity" as stated in Lexport's review. The word GOLDEN can also mean a whopping good tale which doesn't seem to be listed in the online dictionaries: The Golden Ass is a good example of this. What makes a man, woman, child, person? What is our golden mean? These are the questions I have taken away from this book.

As with Byatt's The Children's Book, this book too could have been longer. But maybe we are meant to fill in the blanks, create our own golden mean from all that is known and written about Aristotle and Alexander; the golden, good, bad and indifferent. This book definitely places both of these enormous historic figures back down on planet earth.

This book was a disappointment. How could a story about Aristotle tutoring Alexander the Great be boring? By being somewhat disjointed in exploring various topics or plots, but giving little of Aristotle's philosophy and leaving big gaps in the maturing of Alexander. And, by ending with an excerpt of Aristotle's will. This is fiction, so I was expecting more of a story. Aristotle himself asks throughout the book "what is a tragedy?", and the fact that a book with all these ingredients is just ok may be the answer.

This book had so much promise! Written from the point of view of Aristotle, dealing with war, intrigue and philosophy, and a cast of characters including Alexander the Great, how can you possibly go wrong? And yet...

I was carried along by the story to about the halfway point when I started trying to put my finger on why I was not enjoying it more. Finally, it came to me. Annabel Lyon pulls off what seems to be impossible: she makes the lives of Aristotle and Alexander the Great dull. The little bits of Aristotle's thought we are given are dull. The battles we see, the history they are supposedly living, all are dull. Lyon lacks imagination or the skill to deal with the material. I have ordered the trilogy dealing with Alexander the Great written by Mary Renault. Those, I am sure, will be the antidote to this most disappointing book.

Summary: A fictional retelling of the years Aristotle spent tutoring Alexander the Great, told from the point of view of Aristotle himself. Although he is disappointed at leaving Athens for what he perceives as backwards Macedon, he forges a complicated relationship with his brilliant new pupil.

Review: This is the fifth book in my goal to read the entire 2009 Giller shortlist. With this book, I am done. Yay! I saved this book for last because the subject interested me the most. I like Greek philosophy, I like Alexander the Great, and I like stories about pedagogy. So I went into The Golden Mean excepting nothing but good stuff all around.

For the most part, I got what I wanted. Lyon’s writing is described in the synopsis as tender but muscular, and that’s a better way of describing it than I ever could. Lyon alternates between a gritty depiction of life in the ancient Mediterranean and Aristotle’s lofty philosophical musings. I like that Aristotle is both a brilliant man and a human one; Lyon shows his interactions with his wife, with his household, with his own uncertainties. He is not a distant, inaccessible narrator, which is the one thing I was worried about going into the novel.

There are a lot of nice touches in The Golden Mean, a lot of strikingly strong writing. I think my favourite part was when Aristotle observes Alexander's "pink, sweet" euphemism for sex with women and what that says about him. Ha! However, my one complaint is that the novel feels a bit disjointed. Time passes strangely. A lot of the story is Aristotle moving to Macedon and getting to know the court, and then suddenly boom, it’s years later and women who were barely pregnant a few scenes ago are suddenly raising children. This made it hard to get a sense of Aristotle’s teaching of Alexander as a whole. The novel jumps around too much with its passage of time. I felt like I was reading bits and pieces of scenes rather than a unified whole. The scenes were great, but I wish they felt more connected.

Conclusion: A well-written novel, even if it does feel more episodic than a whole.
Rating: B-

This book is a vulgar and licentious story of classic historic figures. It has a fine balance between thought provoking sophistication and gritty humanity. It is not a quick read but I am thoroughly enjoying it.