The Last of the Wine

Keep in mind that this gorgeously written and touching story was first published in 1956 by Renault, an Oxford-educated British woman, dead now 25 years. "Last of the Wine" is much more than a coming of age tale, as we like to call some of these stories nowadays. Far from it. Yes, it is a gay love story, sans sex, a subtle and timeless and accurately portrayed romance between 2 beautiful young men in 5th Century B.C. Greece - thus, before Alexander. There's a good bit of history and a lot of fun in meeting some of the incomparable ancients - an aging Socrates and a young Plato, and in hearing about others, Alkibiades, for one. If you manage to read Steven Pressfield and Renault, as well as others writing of this era, it all begins to make sense. Renault seems magically to understand perfectly love in its deepest sense between men and those touchy human aspects of love between anyone: possessiveness, jealousy, soft adoration, absence and longing, and the overwhelming desire to spend all one's time with one's love, to say nothing of comfortable easy silences and shared thoughts. The 2 primary characters, Alexis (the younger of the two by 6 years) and Lysis, are physical ideals and good to the core. They know how to enjoy the long-lost simple pleasures. I loved them both. She also grasps firmly the intricacies of family, of obligation and of the inevitable inscrutable conflict between father and son. "Last of the Wine" is as contemporary as your latest e-mail exchange with your partner or offspring. She writes with finesse and profundity. Consider these excerpts. Page 241. "It was a warm spring evening; one smelt the sea, and supper cooking on pinewood fires, and the scent of flowers upon the hillside; we sat in the doorway of our hut in the late sun, greeting friends as they passed." Page 242. "The evening sun glowed like bronze upon the reed thatch of the roofs; here and there men were singing about the fires. I (Alexis) said in my heart, `Such things as these are the pleasures of manhood.'" Page 243. "But we sat a little longer; for as the sun sank, the moon had risen. Her light had mixed with the afterglow, and the hill behind the city was the colour of skins of lions." Page 244. "'Nothing will change, Alexis' (Lysis speaking). `No that is false; there is change wherever there is life.... But what kind of fool would plant an apple-slip, to cut it down at the season when the fruit is setting? Flowers you can get every year, but only with time the tree that shades your doorway and grows into the house with each year's sun and rain.'" As Adlai Stevenson once said, "Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job." These young men had a firm grasp on reality. The story traces not only the rise of fledgling democracy but also its temporary demise. The build-up to Socrates' eventual murder by authorities fearful of his teachings is compelling. The end of the story is both uplifting and sad. Renault's "Notes" at the end of the book are insightful, the "Chronology Table" is helpful, and the map of "Greece and the Aegean" is a good anchor for orienting yourself to political and physical geography. Yes, it is fiction. Yes, the over-riding theme is a gay love story. And yes, it's enthralling and gracious. Relax into the story, flow with its pace, learn from it, and read it with unabashed pleasure. Forget the homophobe reviewers who are falsely "offended" by the story (after, of course, they knowingly have read every word!).

This was a vivid tale of ancient, tumultuous Greece, in its most heroic but troubled time—told through the all-seeing eyes of a young man both student of Socrates and an Athenian citizen soldier. It helped me put in place the many disparate events and legendary figures of that famed time. However, author Mary Renault quite often described the protagonist’s feelings in terms (that may well have been in ancient philosophical terms I didn’t know—a problem I never noticed in Renault’s The King Must Die concerning not a philosopher but Theseus); sometimes in Last of the Wine I was confused about what point Renault was trying to make. Nonetheless, I really appreciate having read this book—one essentially enlightening and wonderful.

A stunning novel, a work of art. A rare novel where one travels with the character learning not only of ancient Greece, its rituals, customs, way of life among others , but also questioning human existence, morality, honor, all through the eyes of the protagonist Alexias. It took me a long time to read because I needed to live the book so to speak, and, I was so sad when I finished it, wishing it had been a series. Also to mention is the relationship of Alexias and Lysis, she writes the character’s relationship beautifully, showing them as they are: two people in love, having quarrels, missing each other, growing together. I truly enjoyed seeing their love blossom page after page and it brings the love between two men to the front. I can understand why this novel had such a huge impact on the gay community when it came out, and how consistent Mary is with her values on relationships be it same-sex or not: love and honor first, then sex- which is not to say sex is bad, just that between the love of two people there should be a higher ideal. Of course another point to bring out is how well researched the novel is, reading her Bio, one can see the amount of time and effort spent to do this correctly and she did succeed, bringing to life the everyday life of an ancient Athenian from then trivial things such as house chores, to being in the colonnade, the perfume shop, the drinking parties and the supper couches, posing for a sculptor, taking part in the Games. Her debate on the nature of democracy, honor, and tyranny is quite impressive, especially since she wrote it when it was a hard time in South Africa where she had emigrated. Even today these questions on morality and handling of politics ring true. Mary Renault did it again with this book, bringing Ancient Greece and its history to life with the realistic portrayals of Alcibiades, and Socrates, recreating what would have been like to have been part of his circle; to sit by him and debate from basic everyday questions to that of human existence.

Astounding literature, from a woman who lived her life in secrecy yet found a way to express her innermost thoughts through painstaking research and fascinating details. Marvelous language. I was very, very moved by this book and will read more.

I've been searching for good historical fiction novels after falling in love with Ken Follett's work, especially the Pillars of Earth and World Without End. I heard Mary Renault was a master of classical historical fiction, and I especially love the period around the Peloponnesian War, so I gave this book of her a try first. I did enjoy parts of reading it, I got quite interested in several of the characters and a few of the scenes, such as competing in the games, or protecting Athens as part of the city guard service. However, it's far too long of a time period and too much to take on for such a small novel. Which would have been fine, if the author hadn't felt the need to explain so much of the political goings-on and battles. As is, she jams in a massive amount of very factually written history between more flowery prose and I found it rather jarring. In the end I skipped through all the history and politics, because it was about as exciting as reading a dry history book, and skipped to the character plots.

Mary Renault's contributions to 20th century literature may not be gainsaid. Her work on classical Greek historical themes is unsurpassed, comparable only to Robert Graves's contributions on the Roman period. She writes with a deep sensitivity and insight into the Socratic / Platonic / Aristotelian philosophical traditions. Her intuition into the "friendship" relationships between men of the period is compelling and illuminating. These relationships very likely formed much of the world as it came to be and as it is now known to us. That she courageously wrote of these relationships at a time when they were denied and officially penalized by the oppressive culture in which she then lived is testament to her greatness. She can be credited, as much as anyone, in the LGBT liberation movement that began in earnest just before her death and continues, albeit haltingly, today.

Renault assumes that her reader has a working knowledge of ancient Greek history. I did not, so was befuddled here and there. However, I learned a great deal and enjoyed the action and pace of most of the book.

I credit Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Robert Graves and Colleen McCullough with making a much younger me fall in love with the classical world. I have never stopped learning about that time but had not read Renault in many years. Frequent traveling makes physical books problematic and her books took a long time to arrive on Kindle. Now that they are available in this extraordinarily convenient format, I would urge anyone interested in the classical period to read this and all of Renault's works now. Academic history is important. But it risks giving us a black-and-white photo perspective on the past. We learn the facts but may feel as if those people were different. They weren't. Or, I should say they were different, of course. But not in their essentials. They loved like us. They hated like us. They aspired, dreamed, tried and failed like us. They made similar mistakes for similar reasons. Reading great historical fiction like Renault allows us to feel history as the participants might have. And, in so doing, it allows us to understand the triumphs and tragedies of the past as part of a cycle that we have repeated many times and will again. The circumstances change but not the essential story.