I may be struggling with my new release reading recently, but Greek mythology retellings continue to make me all kinds of happy. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati is my latest favorite, a bold portrayal of a woman known only as the vengeful wife of Agamemnon, the King who won the war with Troy. The other ‘facts’ of Clytemnestra are these: Helen of Troy was her sister, she had an ... Read More...
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
How wonderful to start the week with a book I loved so much I’m ready to read it again. Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes is her latest foray into the retelling of famous Greek myths from a female perspective. In this case it is the fearsome Medusa, known as one of the most terrifying monsters in the ancient Greek world. One look from her turned any living object into stone. In the ... Read More...
Elektra: A Novel of the House of Atreus
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 ... Read More...
The Women of Troy: A Novel
Helen has always been the most well-known woman from the legend of Troy, but author Pat Barker brings to life another woman who, through no will of her own, played a role even more critical to the Trojan War mythology. Briseis. The queen of a city sacked by Achilles when the war first began, she was given to him as a war prize to be his concubine. Barker’s last novel, The ... Read More...
Ariadne: A Novel by Jennifer Saint
If you’re a fan of Greek mythology than 2021 is shaping up to be a great year. First there was A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes (which I loved) and now there’s Ariadne, the story of a Cretan princess whose half-brother is the fearsome Minotaur. The Minotaur’s life and death are a mainstay of Greek mythology, but author Jennifer Saint pushes the beast and Theseus, the prince ... Read More...
A Thousand Ships: A Novel
Happy Monday! I don’t often say that because, well…Monday, but today I’m back with a novel that kept me captivated. A Thousand Ships is Natalie Haynes’s retelling of the Trojan War or, more specifically, the immediate aftermath of the war. Not exactly new territory, as any number of writers have memorialized this greatest battle of Greek mythology, except Haynes chooses a ... Read More...
