In Search of a Homeland: The Story of The Aeneid Book

I was eager to read this book once I realized it existed--the Aeneid is a very important work to me, and I've read several of Penelope Lively's novels with great admiration. But I'm not sure what to say about this effort. She attempts to present the gist of the Aeneid for young readers (how young? The story seems too adult for anyone under about 14, but the oversized format--9x11 inches--makes it seem like a book for very young children.) Lively doesn't write down to them, she writes with dignity, and she judiciously cuts the most difficult parts. She also starts with the fall of Troy and tells the whole story in chronological order. The real Aeneid starts with a bang--a storm at sea in which a number of ships go to the bottom, and Aeneas's first words in the poem are essentially "I wish I were dead." Lively cuts that speech. In Virgil, only after they struggle to land near Carthage and meet Dido does Aeneas himself describe the fall of Troy (the locus classicus of what it feels like to watch your home destroyed by the enemy) followed by his wanderings up to that point. And the whole Dido-Aeneas story doesn't seem appropriate for children: the emotions are too raw and the issues too complex. Lively doesn't pull any punches in this part of the story. The illustrator gives us not one but two pictures of Dido run through with Aeneas's sword, one of them in the very moment of suicide. By contrast, some of the most beautiful similes--as when Aeneas sees the shade of Dido in the underworld--are omitted or flattened. It's an honest attempt, but I'm not sure it was a good idea.