Candy Hearts and Greek Myths
For Valentine's Day, the Candy Hearts Exchange went live, and I received two gifts, both SW: The Clone Wars stories: give us something to celebrate and yet peace, both stories in which conversations Anakin has with Ahsoka (and Obi-Wan) make fundamental changes.
I also finished reading A Thousand Ships, a, hm, less than a novel than an interconnected tapestry of stories based on Trojan War related myths by Natalie Haynes. Each of the myths is told from a female perspective, and in a non-liniear fashion; for example, the Penthesilea story (near the end of the war) happens before the Iphigenia story (at the start of the war). Like The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, this one's take on Briseis and Chryseis (and for that matter any of the female prisoners taken slaves by the Greeks) pointedly avoids presenting their relationships as romances. I think this is the retelling whose take on Cassandra was most visceral for me, because the author had Cassandra experience her visions of the future as memories. (I.e. like Doctor Manhattan in Watchman, she experiences past, present and future simultanously and all the time. Unlike him, she remains human. Talk about a curse.) I'm reasonably well versed in Greek mythology, but there were some myths I hadn't been familiar with, and afterwards had to google, such as the story of Hecuba's revenge on Polymestor, which I see is from both a Euripides play and Ovid. Though Haynes made one telling change; in her book, as in practically every modern retelling I've seen save for an intriguing Yuletide story from years past, Agamemnon is an unredeemable villain, and thus the Greek hero who sides with Hecuba in her version isn't Agamemnon but Odysseus.
Another decision any author tackling the Trojan War myths has to make is whether or not to use the Gods. Haynes does include them, and provides some intriguing twists, most of all by using the non-linear storytelling to reveal bit by bit the underlying true reason for the Trojan War. There are some surprising yet effective decisions, like having Thetis being proud of her son up to and including his early death but then feeling let down when he tells Odysseus in that bit from the Odyssey which remains one of the most challenging bits to the warrior ethos of those epics that he regrets his famous choice (glory and an early death instead of long life and mediocrity) and would rather be a farmer but alive than the greatest of heroes and death. This Thetis sees this as a betrayal and the point where she realises he's more human and the son of Peleus than her son after all. Unfortunately, one of the very few intallments that don't work for me are the Penelope passages, perhaps because all the other female povs come across as telling their own stories, whereas Penelope tells that of Odysseus (except for the first time she speaks). I mean, I do see the basic problem - evidently Heynes wanted to include the Odyssey stories and she wanted to include Penelope as a pov, and so she has Penelope tell those stories via letters to her absent husbands where she repeats what she heard from the bards about his adventures with her own sarcastic commentary. But that still makes them not Penolope's stories, and I wonder whether a better solution would have been to divide the Oddyssey tales between Penolope, Circe, Kalypso and Nausicaa.
Lastly, as opposed to some other modern retellings where the brutality of the male characters' actions is preserved, but not of the female characters, here this doesn't happen, which means the various revenge acts by women fall on the guilty and innocent alike (true for both Hecuba's and Clytemnestra's revenges, for example), and thus several the female characters are victims and perpetrators alike. It's a compelling book, but definitely not one for escapist purposes.
I also finished reading A Thousand Ships, a, hm, less than a novel than an interconnected tapestry of stories based on Trojan War related myths by Natalie Haynes. Each of the myths is told from a female perspective, and in a non-liniear fashion; for example, the Penthesilea story (near the end of the war) happens before the Iphigenia story (at the start of the war). Like The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, this one's take on Briseis and Chryseis (and for that matter any of the female prisoners taken slaves by the Greeks) pointedly avoids presenting their relationships as romances. I think this is the retelling whose take on Cassandra was most visceral for me, because the author had Cassandra experience her visions of the future as memories. (I.e. like Doctor Manhattan in Watchman, she experiences past, present and future simultanously and all the time. Unlike him, she remains human. Talk about a curse.) I'm reasonably well versed in Greek mythology, but there were some myths I hadn't been familiar with, and afterwards had to google, such as the story of Hecuba's revenge on Polymestor, which I see is from both a Euripides play and Ovid. Though Haynes made one telling change; in her book, as in practically every modern retelling I've seen save for an intriguing Yuletide story from years past, Agamemnon is an unredeemable villain, and thus the Greek hero who sides with Hecuba in her version isn't Agamemnon but Odysseus.
Another decision any author tackling the Trojan War myths has to make is whether or not to use the Gods. Haynes does include them, and provides some intriguing twists, most of all by using the non-linear storytelling to reveal bit by bit the underlying true reason for the Trojan War. There are some surprising yet effective decisions, like having Thetis being proud of her son up to and including his early death but then feeling let down when he tells Odysseus in that bit from the Odyssey which remains one of the most challenging bits to the warrior ethos of those epics that he regrets his famous choice (glory and an early death instead of long life and mediocrity) and would rather be a farmer but alive than the greatest of heroes and death. This Thetis sees this as a betrayal and the point where she realises he's more human and the son of Peleus than her son after all. Unfortunately, one of the very few intallments that don't work for me are the Penelope passages, perhaps because all the other female povs come across as telling their own stories, whereas Penelope tells that of Odysseus (except for the first time she speaks). I mean, I do see the basic problem - evidently Heynes wanted to include the Odyssey stories and she wanted to include Penelope as a pov, and so she has Penelope tell those stories via letters to her absent husbands where she repeats what she heard from the bards about his adventures with her own sarcastic commentary. But that still makes them not Penolope's stories, and I wonder whether a better solution would have been to divide the Oddyssey tales between Penolope, Circe, Kalypso and Nausicaa.
Lastly, as opposed to some other modern retellings where the brutality of the male characters' actions is preserved, but not of the female characters, here this doesn't happen, which means the various revenge acts by women fall on the guilty and innocent alike (true for both Hecuba's and Clytemnestra's revenges, for example), and thus several the female characters are victims and perpetrators alike. It's a compelling book, but definitely not one for escapist purposes.