Ithaca: The exquisite, gripping tale that breathes life into ancient myth (The Songs of Penelope)

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Through Hera’s eyes, we get the perspective of many women besides Penelope, including Clytemnestra, Elektra, and Penelope’s maids.

Hera herself choses to back Clytemnestra, Penelope’s cousin, who has just murdered her husband, Agamemnon, and fled to Ithaca for sanctuary. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I don't want to say too much about the plot, because seeing what North chooses to focus on was surprising for me, but the problem of the suitors looms large, and is explored in a way that feels completely unique to me. However, I did find that the novel lacked pace (surprising given the twist), which is why I am withholding one star - but I will no doubt read the sequel in due course. With its well-written, fluid and elegant prose, even pacing throughout the novel, and themes of feminism, survival and loyalty Claire North’s Ithaca is an engaging read that I would recommend to fans of Greek Mythology and those fond of feminist retellings.Ithaca by Claire North is the first book in a trilogy about Penelope’s Ithaca as she struggles to hold the kingdom together during Odysseus’ absence. It's awfully confusing, not to me personally because I know the Ithacan setting of the Odyssey very well so I know what is going on, but not every reader will, so this writing is likely to be discouraging. so i think if youve never read anything about penelope, this will be a new and interesting story for you.

Sometimes, I wonder if the author is biased towards Clytemnestra and Helen for subversion of narratives, to go counter to the usual portrayals of these two, than in doing Penelope justice. Each has very different interests and views, but each embodies a different aspect of power – including power which is threatened or changing by the world around them. But the storytelling itself - so key in the source material and so well executed by other modern authors - is uneven and distracting and detracting from the overall effort. Thankfully, Penelope is incredibly clever, and she maintains this balance deftly and with astounding subtlety.It did allow the author to include more information that Penelope would have had no way of knowing, but she sacrificed including this information for losing any character depth and development for the protagonist. Had I not been familiar with these, I might have gotten lost in the names and the plot and not noticed the superb writing and how North was playing with form. As always, I made the choice to go with the most plausible political options, rather than the mythological, since I was always much more interested in monarchs murdering each other in the dark than minotaurs. Feminist twists to myths are now rather to be expected but I did enjoy the way the author constructed this one.