Book report 13
By A. Bae Hel
No Friend to this House
Natalie Haynes
Greek myths are currently enjoying a spotlight in current entertainment due to the recently released movie of Odysseus and the upset and outrage over the casting. Apparently, there is a right way to cast fictional mythical characters and a wrong way to cast them and the people who have never read Greek myths know the right way. I love the wounded outrage over mythical characters portrayal.
Enter Medea. This is the telling of her story, not Jason’s. Not the Argonauts. And it is not Euripides’s story. The telling is broken into parts told by the various women and goddesses involved. And animals. While the perspective is that of the women, it remains true to the canon, just fills in where the traditional male arc missed out. Medea’s tragedy is spun out with well researched detail. The author knows her Greek myths and uses that base to build an involving, richly detailed narrative about the characters. Medea is a character much more than the helper of heroes, or the woman betrayed. She is given complexity and a lot less rage than I would expect given the betrayal. But her vengeance is epic, and her decisions understandable.
The author has given us several books on Greek myths told from the perspectives of the female characters along with several non-fiction on the myths and ancient Greece. She is an excellent story teller and well worth your time. I can only imagine the outrage should someone decide to make a movie of her portrayal of the ‘heroes’ of the Trojan war.
The Women of Troy Book 1 and 2
The Silence of the Girls
The Women of Troy
Pat Barker
As I have said, I love finding reimagined fairy tales, myths and legends. The Greek myths books in the
school library were my favourites and I read them over and over, but as an old woman I want to hear
the story from the perspective of someone other than the toxic male.
These are those stories.
For 10 long years the Greeks waged war on Troy simply because a man got all pissy when his wife left
him. There is debate whether she left on her own accord, or whether she was kidnapped and raped by
Paris, but to Menalus it didn’t matter, his ego was bruised. So, for 10 years he and his king buddies laid
siege to Troy. Some say it was all plotted by Zeus to deal with over population. After 10 years of war,
you can be fairly certain it hampered future population booms.
After the Greeks destroyed Troy, they were stuck there on the land where they had set up camp
because apparently another god, Poseidon was pissed that his favourite didn’t win. These are the
stories of the women taken as slaves and conquest of war. Women whose men had all been killed.
Women handed around as honor gifts to other kings.
The stories not put in the Greek and Roman myths books in the school library. These stories are
narrated by Brisels a queen of one of Toy’s neighbouring kingdoms who becomes the prize of Achilles.
Just one of the thousands of women taken as bounty, she narrates the lives of the camp and the
conflicts post war. Women trying to navigate survival in a post war victors camp where pissing matches
continue even after the enemy is gone.
Well researched and filling in the gaps again. Worth your time
