The Golden Mean is the balance a ruler has to strike between aggression and temperance. Alexander the Great lacked that balance and isn’t well know for anything other than his extreme ambition and his extreme aggression. Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean is a fictional account of Aristotle’s years as Alexander the Great’s tutor and his attempts to instill balance into Alexander’s psyche.

The plot is thin, but it doesn’t really matter. Although there are some rather too graphic scenes, involving in particular some gory surgery and dissections of small animals for the benefit of some Lord of the Flies like adolescents, this is not a book about things happening. Its Aristotle’s personal, rather dispassionate account of his relationship with his wife, Philip the 2nd and especially with the teenaged Alexander. It’s a little like reading a diary or a journal where  the author records his observations but reserves any feelings.

Nevertheless, what really counts in this book isn’t the relationships either. The Golden Mean looks like a paperback historical novel, it’s published as a historical novel, but it isn’t a historical novel. It’s a poem. A poem without verse or rhythm, but a flow of words that carries you along with it and has a slow quality all of its own.

If you like that sort of thing, you’ll like this. I must admit I’m not too keen myself, but all the same, this looks like a winner.

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