So very good. Here I was thinking the writing style kept me at a remove from the story and I wasn’t as invested as I could be, and then the last two chapters walloped me in the gut and I realized it had me at the emotional level after all. Enough that I already have more Mary Renault queued up to read.
Also, apropos of almost nothing, every time I picked up this book I heard Billy Collins in my head:
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine…