The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

Elektra: A Novel of the House of Atreus

May 11, 2022

elektra

Elektra by Jennifer Saint
Published by Flatiron Books
Publication date: May 3, 2022
Genres: Fiction
five-stars
Bookshop, Amazon

A Greek queen, her daughter, and a princess of Troy are thrown into each other’s lives thanks to the Trojan War. In her new novel, Elektra, Jennifer Saint paints a complex portrait of these women as they shift between being pawns in a patriarchal game of domination and agents of their own lives determined to exact some measure of control over their fates. Deliciously satisfying reading.

As Agamemnon’s queen in Mycenae Clytemnestra’s life is good one. Her sister Helen is married to her husband’s brother, and despite marrying into the Atreus family, well-known as cursed for their bloody familial feuds, things are quiet. Clytemnestra has had a calming effect on her husband so when he agrees to go to Troy to get his brother’s wife back she has no real fears. Not even when he sends for her and their eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to marry the greatest Greek warrior, Achilles. Little does she know it will change her and the lives of everyone around her. When she returns home, she is a woman possessed by wrath, no longer the kind and loving mother her daughter Elektra has known.

For Elektra, as her mother changes and withdraws, her father stays imprinted in her mind for the next decade as a king favored by the gods, whose actions are never to be doubted. She knows of the family curse, but believes she can close the circle and end the tragedy when her father returns. When her mother takes their uncle as her lover, the chasm between the two widens to the point that Elektra flouts all the rules of society and leaves the castle for a life unheard of by royal mortals.

Far away, the young Cassandra, a Trojan princess, longs to be favored by the gods. Her mother was given ‘the sight’ by Apollo, but chose to ignore it regarding her youngest son Paris. Cassandra vows to do a better job and dedicates herself to honoring Apollo as one of his priestesses. But when the day comes and Apollo appears in his temple Cassandra makes an egregious mistake. The furious Apollo gifts her with prophecy, but curses her with never being believed. This leaves her in a place of near madness as she witnesses the future in her mind, but is derided as insane and a monster. Of the three, she is the most pitiable; her inability to control her fate predetermined by a god’s rage. She watches from the sidelines as all she knows to come unfolds in front of her. The reader is her only audience as she chronicles a decade of war and its aftermath. Only her death is her own.

Didn’t I just love this novel of vengeance, fury, plotting, and subterfuge? Yes. My rage may be overly stoked by the impending hit American women are about to take over control of their own bodies so I was all in to sit back and read about arrogant men turning on each other, committing infanticide and cannibalism to gain power and mock the gods, always paying the price in blood. Theirs and everyone around them. That Elektra, Clytemnestra, and Cassandra found their own ways to exact vengeance only made it better. Petty reading on my part? You betcha.

This is a subjective 5 stars on my part because in the pantheon of books on Greek mythology Elektra is a standout. Is it for everyone? Not if you detest mythology.  But if you like dramatic, well-written fiction then reading Elektra is like being in the front row to one of the greatest Greek tragedies of all time. Spellbinding.

Want more outstanding Greek mythology with the focus on women? Try Pat Barker’s novels, The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy.

 

This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on a link and make a purchase of any kind, I get a small commission (at no cost to you).

 

*I received a free copy of this book from Flatiron Books in exchange for an honest review.*

 

five-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 5 Star Books
  • By Jennifer Saint
winter
Winter 2021 Books I’m Ready to Read
stone
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
july
July Reading Wrap-Up
ariadne
Ariadne: A Novel by Jennifer Saint
best
Best Books of 2018
perfect
The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy
dopesick
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America
preservationist
The Preservationist: A Novel by Justin Kramon
Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
prayer
A Prayer for Travelers
smacked
Smacked: A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy
The Night Rainbow
The Night Rainbow
curiosities
A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny
forty rooms
Forty Rooms
bloomsbury
Bloomsbury Girls: A Novel
gems
2022 Underrated Gems
Atalanta
Atalanta by Jennifer Saint
ariadne
Ariadne: A Novel by Jennifer Saint

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: mythology

Comments

  1. Linda McMichael says

    May 11, 2022 at 1:40 pm

    Who doesn’t love Greek/Roman/Norse mythology? This past weekend, when our Netflix was on the fritz, we dug out our DVD of the movie “Troy,” with Brad Pitt (Achilles), Eric Bana (Hector), Peter O’Toole (Priam), Sean Bean (Odysseus!) and the one and only Brian Cox as Agamemnon. It was the third or fourth time we’d seen this, but each time it gets better. I will suggest Elecktra to the book club on our next selection cycle. I know, movies aren’t as edifying as reading Edith Hamilton, but a good one, like Wolfgang Petersen’s “Troy,” can re-light that thirst for knowledge of the building blocks of our Western thought and literature.

    And kudos for pointing out how timely this book is, with women’s rights almost as precarious as they were 3200 years ago.

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      May 12, 2022 at 3:05 pm

      Troy is a lot of eye candy! I love movies that pique my interest in a subject and that one definitely did. Now that I’ve read so much about the Trojan War I see that the movie strays far from the myth, but it’s still entertaining. I wish Hollywood would make a Troy movie from one of the great recent fictional accounts told from the women’s perspectives.

      And yes to women’s rights. I feel sick about what’s happening.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Bookshop

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Bookshop and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2023

Copyright © 2023 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in