The narrative structure of the Iliad, K. argues, is remarkably similar to that of the television serial. For the purpose of the argument, it is important to recognise the distinction between a serial and a series. A series may run indefinitely. On the television serial, K. quotes media critic P. Holland, who describes it as ‘usually fixed to a limited number of episodes’ and so ‘an expansion of the creative coherence of the single play’ (p. 237). Like the Iliad, a serial unfolds and reaches consummation only gradually and over a long period of time. The serial, again like the Iliad, ‘is reliant on audience memory’ (p. 4). K. cheerfully admits to being an avid watcher of television (p. 1). No reviewer or reader of the book can possibly question this claim. References to an extraordinarily large number of television serials, seen as analogous to the Iliad in one way or another, dot the book throughout. Examples include Daredevil, Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Game of Thrones and many, many others. Those lacking her extensive knowledge of the large body of television serials may still follow the book's argument with pleasure and profit.

K. analyses the Iliad using terminology developed in criticism of the television serial. She sees the plot of the poem unfolding through a sequence of beats, episodes and arcs (p. 4). A beat is the smallest unit of a television serial. It focuses on characters or events and most often corresponds to a change in scene (p. 7). Beats are found in the Iliad, for example, in the exchange between Calchas and Achilles (Il. 1.69–100 [p. 7]) or in the first appearance of Hector in the poem (Il. 2.786–810 [p. 30]). In both the television serial and the Iliad, sequential beats build into episodes (p. 10). While a television serial usually has a specific number of episodes of equal or near-equal length, the Iliad presents a special challenge in determining where an episode begins and ends. K. is prudently content to identify possible performance breaks throughout the poem that may constitute the Iliad’s episodes; these may or may not correspond to the poem's book divisions (pp. 10–11). Arcs extend beyond the breaks at the end of episodes and are focused on various characters. ‘The arc builds a sense of mimetic realism in characters as it creates an illusion of continuity between beats and episodes' (p. 14). ‘Each character in the Iliad has an arc’. The arcs of Achilles and Hector extend over the entire length of the poem (p. 13).

K. reads the poem from beginning to end, starting with the first beat, the proem, and ending with Book 24's description of the funeral of Hector. She sees the Iliad and the television serial as equally concerned with the gradual revelation of character rather than with character development (p. 16). She charts the path through which Hector's character is gradually revealed. He first appears in the mention of others, his enemies. In Book 1, Achilles and Agamemnon speak of Hector and the danger he represents to the Greek army (pp. 26, 29). The emphasis on death in the short Trojan catalogue of Book 2 conveys ‘a sense of the danger that Hector faces in the poem to come’ (p. 32). In Book 3, Hector speaks for the first time. He distinguishes himself from Paris, whom he paints in a bad light. Soon after, Agamemnon demands that Priam oversees the treaty and the single combat between Paris and Menelaus. His words create a certain ambiguity regarding the two Trojans: ‘Are the brothers more alike than they seem?’ (pp. 35–6). Until Book 6, Hector's character ‘remains elusive’. ‘He exists silently’, she says in a nice phrase, ‘like a black hole at the intersection of several gazes’ (p. 53). Book 6 establishes audience allegiance with Hector. His interaction with Andromache ‘finally gives us real access to Hektor’: ‘You will care, in one way or another, about what will happen to Hektor’ (p. 67). Hector now begins to play a greater role in the poem. Agamemnon further inflates his importance in Book 10, where he imagines the Trojan leader ‘as the most fearful warrior that the world has ever seen’ (p. 93). Book 12 is concerned with the establishment of Hector's values: his bravery and willingness to fight and die on behalf of his city (p. 111). When he strips Achilles' armour from the dead Patroclus in Book 16, the audience might well question the extent to which its allegiance to Hector is justified (p. 166). From the moment Achilles kills Hector in Book 22, the audience must once again form their images of the hero from the words of others, much as they did in the beginning of the poem (p. 208). Various reflections on Hector's character fixes ‘a certain image of him in our minds that lingers long after our experience of the Iliad has passed’ (p. 215). K. never tries to identify what this ‘certain image’ might be.

The discussion of the hero from his death in Book 22 to his burial in Book 24 seems to me to require further development. K. claims that ‘Hektor becomes more Hektor’ after he dons the armour of Achilles (p. 167). I think, rather, that Hector becomes more like Achilles. In the god's-eye view of the climactic battle between Achilles and Hector in Book 22, the audience sees Achilles chasing and killing Hector in a kind of murder/suicide. K. has too little to say about the poem's closing with the funeral of Hector. Hector's funeral is also the funeral of the citizens of Troy because without him the city is doomed to destruction. Perhaps, by extension, the death and funeral of Hector may be taken more generally to represent the fate of all mortals – including audiences to the poem both ancient and modern. ‘We all have it coming, Kid’, William Munny tells the Schofield Kid in Unforgiven (1992), a film based largely on the Iliad. This may be Homer's final message as well.

K's. concern with the character of Hector seems at odds with the larger project of elucidating the structure of the poem and its close relationship to the television serial. As a result, readers primarily concerned with Hector must necessarily make their way through large chunks of the book that have little or nothing to do with Hector. After all, the poem is centred on Achilles and his wrath against the Achaeans. After finishing the book, I remained uncertain as to why Hector is her favourite character. That being said, I think K. does a marvellous job of elucidating the structure of the poem.

Much recent scholarship on the Iliad is devoted to finding the structure of the poem, as if there might be only one. In fact, the poem must have at least two. In determining structure, a reader or critic must distinguish between the ‘process of reading as it is taking place and the retrospective interpretation of that process once it has been completed’ (P. Rabinowitz, Before Reading [1987], p. 110). K. is concerned with structure in the former sense, which, to my mind, offers more valuable insight than what can be gleaned from retrospective interpretation of the reading process in a poem like the Iliad, where character only gradually develops or, in K.’s view, is only gradually revealed.

Experiencing Hektor has much to offer both scholars and students. But perhaps Experiencing the Iliad might have been a better title.