Amazon.com Review

The Golden Mean portrays lives that grow bigger as they unfold--in this case, two of the most notable lives ever lived, those of Alexander the Great and his tutor, Aristotle. In sharply executed, revealing dialogue, Lyon draws contrasts between the rational, sensitive Aristotle and the charming, dangerous Alexander, and we're reminded of another sense of the Golden Mean, the classical ideal of a balance between extremes. In this subtle, earthy story, we watch as the events of Aristotle’s life mold the ideas that made him famous, and watch those ideas in turn mold the prince of Macedon who would one day "open his mouth and swallow the whole world." Lyon draws the curtain back on the smoke-filled huts and palace chambers that shaped the lives of these two great men, whose mutual admiration and intellect transformed civilization. It’s historical fiction at its finest. --Juliet Disparte

Hilary Mantel Reviews The Golden Mean

Hilary Mantel is the author of ten novels, including The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. She lives in England. Read her review of The Golden Mean:

I think this quietly ambitious and beautifully achieved novel is one of the most convincing historical novels I have ever read. Lyon makes her reader avid for every detail of this strange world, whether domestic or medical or military, and she has steeped herself in the thinking of the time. She makes her characters entirely solid and real, while respecting their otherness, the distance between us. That is what characterized Mary Renault's novels, and I think that she would have deeply admired this book. There is a particular difficulty for the novelist in putting on the page characters, like Aristotle and Alexander, who are so famous that they have a mythic quality--there is the danger that anything you say will be bathetic. Lyon avoids this by clear-eyed directness, by freshness of vision, and prose that is clean and careful. And I thought that she chose to end the story at precisely the right point. Part of me said "please let there be more," but at the same time I recognize the job is done. Throughout, I think her judgment is sound and true, and the reader trusts her voice from the first paragraph.

From Publishers Weekly

The bond between teacher and student occupies the center of Canadian Lyon's debut novel covering the three years during which Aristotle tutored the young Alexander the Great, before Alexander's accession to the throne of Macedonia. The philosopher narrates, recounting his arrival in the court of Philip of Macedon, Aristotle's upbringing, and his bond with the ruling family. The teenaged Alexander is headstrong and arrogant, but also insecure and vulnerable. "Every student is both a challenge and a laurel leaf," Aristotle says in an early, disputatious meeting. "I haven't seen anything in you that tells me you're extraordinary in any way." Alexander matures as he absorbs Aristotle's core principles. "You must look for the mean between extremes, the point of balance," Aristotle advises the future military genius. Lyon depicts Aristotle's desire to instill a sense of virtue in his royal pupil in clear, often earthy language, and brings 4th-century Greece to startling life. Lyon richly imagines Aristotle's stint as Macedon's royal academician, who gave Alexander the intellectual tools to not only rule but to civilize.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.