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| The Last of the Wine | 
 enlarge | Author: Mary Renault
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $11.99 (100%)
New (7) Used (99) Collectible (1) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 431419
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0394716531
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780394716534
ASIN: 0394716531
Publication Date: August 12, 1975
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Benchmark for Historical Fiction April 19, 2005
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Take a seat and read the first 3 pages. Learn how Alexias survived his first weeks in plague ravaged Athens. Every word grips, pulls you into a time, its like never to be seen again. I have read this novel many times and occassionally after reading some drivel that has left me despondent I'll pick this up and re-read the first three pages, more perfectly wrought than the necklace with which William de Villehardouin wooed and won his Byzantine princess. Gore Vidal has called the novel sentimental, and I think that is correct, but not in a negative way. (You can read his crystalline Julian to get an appreciation of his treatment of historical fiction.) But I do not like to be distanced from the subject. Mary Renault is unafraid of exposing the heart regardless the differences of time and place.
Amazingly beautiful March 27, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Much has already been said about this book and Mary Renault by other reviewers, and said quite well. All I have to add to that is this: it's been over a month since I finished reading this book (I pretty much swallowed it up whole) and I'm still thinking about it. The time period and the characters are so vividly fleshed out that I feel like I went into the book and then walked right out of it with the dust of Kerameikos on my feet. I think Lysis and Alexias are going to stay with me for a very long time as very welcome guests.
Superb Historical Drama August 27, 2004
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
Mary Renault has always been my favorite author ever since I read "The Persian Boy" as a teenager.However, it was "The Last Of The Wine" that demonstrated to me the sheer magic of Reanault's words, how she effortlessly can weave a few historical tidbits into a full-fledged epic novel.
The Last of the Wine, as are many of Mary Renault's greek novels is a homosexual-themed story of friendship,love and ultimately courage and sacrifice.It traces the story of 2 lovers,the handsome youth Alexias and his older friend Lysis.The story depicts in startlingly vivid images the Athenian siege by the army of Sparta and the plague epidemic that nearly devastated the cultural beacon that was Athens.How Alexias survived the siege is one of Mary Renault's finest moments of historical suspense.
The book has also some extremely explicit allusions to subjects considered taboo in the 1950's from latent Oedipus complex (Alexias and his step-mother) to gay love.
As a gay man, I also found this novel to be Mary Renault's most erotic.Gay sex is never once mentioned overtly but is alluded to many times in a way I found to be very sensual.The eroticism between Alexias and Lysis in a scene taking place on the seashore (where Lysis washed Alexias's feet)remains in my mind one of the most powerful depictions of gay love in any novel.Mary Renault knows more about what triggers a gay man than most gay male authors!
Alexias,the handsome young man and Lysis his heartbreakingly ruggedly masculine and loyal lover remain for me Mary Renault's favorite characters.Throughout the novel,these two men sacrifice for each other in a way that I found romantically ideal.A superb novel all the way
 --- May 31, 2004
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was full of historical detail and seemed very well-researched, even if the writing was a little hard to get through at times. I did wonder, and none of the other reviewers have mentioned this, so maybe I'm way off target, if the book's treatment of the abuse of democracy towards the end was supposed to be a reflection on the McCarthyism of the 1950s. Especially when you consider that the book was written in 1956...The comparison, which works even if it is not intentional, really struck me at the very end, where Sokrates is referred to as "anti-democratic" and "un-Athenian" for promoting independant thought and free speech.
Mary Renault's Best Novel. May 28, 2004
Mary Renault has always been my favorite author ever since I read "The Persian Boy" as a teenager.However, it was "The Last Of The Wine" that demonstrated to me the sheer magic of Reanault's words, how she effortlessly can weave a few historical tidbits into a full-fledged epic novel.
The Last of the Wine, as are many of Mary Renault's greek novels is a homosexual-themed story of friendship,love and ultimately courage and sacrifice.It traces the story of 2 lovers,the handsome youth Alexias and his older friend Lysis.The story depicts in startlingly vivid images the Athenian siege by the army of Sparta and the plague epidemic that nearly devastated the cultural beacon that was Athens.How Alexias survived the siege is one of Mary Renault's finest moments of historical suspense.
The book has also some extremely explicit allusions to subjects considered taboo in the 1950's from latent Oedipus complex (Alexias and his step-mother) to gay love.
As a gay man, I also found this novel to be Mary Renault's most erotic.Gay sex is never once mentioned overtly but is alluded to many times in a way I found to be very sensual.The eroticism between Alexias and Lysis in a scene taking place on the seashore (where Lysis washed Alexias's feet)remains in my mind one of the most powerful depictions of gay love in any novel.Mary Renault knows more about what triggers a gay man than most gay male authors!
Alexias,the handsome young man and Lysis his heartbreakingly ruggedly masculine and loyal lover remain for me Mary Renault's favorite characters.Throughout the novel,these two men sacrifice for each other in a way that I found romantically ideal.A superb novel all the way.
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