Noel Gerson
The Golden Lyre
Ace Romantic-Historicals, c1965, ISBN 2468097531
 

Like Mary Butts' The Macedonian, Gerson's novel is a product of its time.  Unlike Butts, it has little to recommend it.  It was written near the end of the boom of public interest in historicals which had given rise earlier to such Hollywood fare as The Fall of the Roman Empire and Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra.  It ranks about equal to them in terms of melodrama over accuracy.

Gerson's is not an unknown name in romance.  One can find stacks of his novels in the historical romance section of used bookstores.  Yes, "his."  Before one calls it odd to see a male writer of romance, one should remember that most hellenistic romance novels were also written by men, for men.  Granted, they had a slightly different emphasis, but they still focused on a hero and heroine . . . as does Gerson's.  In this case, the heroine is the courtesan Thais, who has her sights set on seducing Alexander but winds up falling in love with Ptolemy instead, though initially she hate him (for being the one to take her virginity against her will).  In terms of plot, the novel is fairly predictable, though we have a few historical surprises.  In Gerson's book, Thais is a Macedonian who goes to Athens for training -- and thus earns the epithet "of Athens."  Not historically accurate, but for the sake of the plot . . . very well, as a reader I'll grant him the latitude to change some of the less important (and less certain) facts.

But it soon becomes apparent that the majority of his departures from fact are matters of ignorance, not choice.  In the first thirty pages, we have mention of silk (in Macedonia before Alexander's conquests?); mead; thatched-roof houses in Athens; "eternal hellfire" (a Christian anachronism); the assumption that agora was the name of the Athenian marketplace specifically, not the general Greek word for market; Illyria placed beyond the Danube (!); and Hera and Athena called the same goddess.  At that point, I quit taking notes.  In larger issues, he seems totally unaware that only Argeads (members of one clan) could assume the Macedonian throne.  He also has Alexander's visit to Athens all wrong, and makes Ptolemy far more important early on than he seems to have been.  Lest one be inclined to excuse Mr. Gerson because of unavailable information, one must recall that Renault's Fire From Heaven would be published only four years later, and she got these details correct.  It is a matter of lazy (and spotty) research, not lack of availability.

The back blurb describes the main action so:  "Thais joins the army's march eastward in an attempt to be close to the man she loves . . . the man who can love no woman . . . ."  But this is not muted acknowledgement of Alexander's love for Hephaistion.  Just seven pages into the first chapter, Gerson leaps to disgusted denial of any homoerotic interest on Alexander's part.  Alexander is in love with war, not women.  If published in the middle of the rebellious 1960s, there is much about the novel that sounds more like the 1950s.  Gerson is also sure to get in an affirmation that Greek Zeus and Egyptian Ammon are really the same as Yahweh, so Alexander (among others) sounds monotheistic.  Even if Gerson's heroine is a high-class callgirl (hetaira), he's made sure that otherwise, he won't offend anyone too much.

The book's plot moves along jerkily.  Historical events are summarized at the beginning of sections, then for the narrative, Gerson returns to the focus of things:  Thais and her romantic pursuit of Alexander.  It seems that Mr. Gerson never learned "show, don't tell."  Historical events can be conveyed adequately in a romance without the long-winded (and rather dull) summaries, as Tarr's Lord of the Two Lands shows.  If Gerson's romance was not so predictable, it might bear the intense scrutiny, but one quickly loses interest in and sympathy for Thais.  I also have to confess to a bit of disgust with one more "whore with a heart of gold" who falls in love with her abuser.  The Golden Lyre is a hard book to finish, which may explain why it was not among Gerson's more popular novels.  It rarely shows up amid stacks of other used romances by Gerson.  Unless one is intent on collecting, or curious to read for comparison's sake a story roughly contemporaneous with Renault, it isn't worth the effort of looking, either.