I’ve loved celebrity and pop culture since I was a teen when I would beg my mother to buy me trashy magazines in the grocery store with the promise that I would pay her back (I’m still in arrears on that debt). So even though it played out back in the 1960s I was well aware of the scandal surrounding the relationship between American royalty Jackie Kennedy and Greek tycoon, ... Read More...
Medea by Eilish Quin
There are some criminal court cases where the defense attorney cannot argue their client’s innocence because guilt is so clear. Other ways of mitigating the evidence must be found. Author Eilish Quin successfully adopts the same strategy in her debut novel, Medea, about one of Greek mythology’s most despised women. A woman who killed her brother and later in revenge for being ... Read More...
The Shadow of Perseus
For some, the retelling of Greek myths may have run its course, but for others (me!) I’m still on board to read mythology from a different perspective. My first 5-star novel of the year was Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes, a fiercely feminist, wickedly funny adaptation of the Medusa myth. Now, author Claire Heywood is tackling the same subject in her new novel, The Shadow of ... Read More...
Beautiful Animals: A Novel
But things settled down and flowed on, because it was the law of summers among the rich that the season of leisure should flow like a large and charming river. The imperative was to have a good time and float on the luminescent surface. Meet Naomi, a bored, twenty-three-year-old Brit vacationing on the beautiful Greek island of Hydra. She’s staying at the lovely ... Read More...
Running: A Novel by Cara Hoffman
It’s 1988 when Bridey first meets Jasper but when Running begins it’s with the news of his death. She is back in Athens, the place where she, Jasper and Jasper’s boyfriend Milo worked as runners—someone young and pretty who corrals tourists on the trains heading into Athens, regaling them with the beauty and savings of the hotels where they work, leading them to that ... Read More...
The Song of Achilles
While it’s tempting to adopt an intellectual attitude, in this case I’m going to go with honesty and risk losing everyone’s respect: to date, my greatest interest in the Battle of Troy came when actors Eric Bana and Brad Pitt ran around fighting with no shirts on. There, I admitted it. I’ve never read Homer’s Odyssey or The Iliad. I’m a sexist cretin—until now. Author Madeline ... Read More...
