This is a high-concept book, which often as not don’t really succeed. This book, however, succeeds admirably. The setting is both the world of ancient Greece and today’s New York, and the story is a creatively twisted retelling of the end of the Trojan war. All of the usual suspects are here: Achilles, Phoenix, Odysseus, Philoctetes, and Νeoptolemus (aka Phyrrus “the redhead”). In this telling, Phyrrus escapes his privileged royal upbringing to make his way in “the City”, ultimately winding up as a hustler and go-go boy. After his father’s death, Odysseus (who is off prosecuting his war against Troy) receives an oracle that the battle will ultimately be won only when Achilles’ son and Philoctetes bow are brought to Troy, and Phoenix is dispatched to find the boy and bring him back. Phyrrus is ultimately asked seduce Philoctetes to bring him into the war.

Themes explored include questions of the construction of gay identity, masculinity, aging, AIDS, love, and the ways that gay men are called to reinvent and reclaim the stories of their own lives. This is really a fantastic and creative retelling of these familiar stories. Merlis’ prose is beautiful at times, and his characters are sympathetically and deftly drawn. I don’t read a lot of gay fiction, but this is I think one of those gay books that belongs in every gay man’s library, along with titles such as “At Meat Loves Salt” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?”. In a way Merlis is reclaiming these tales by making them modern, and raising up the homoerotic subtext that is so often ignored in reading these classical stories. I’m sure that scholars of these writings have much to complain about, but as a reasonably-educated reader, I found this book to be immensely satsifying.