Ithaca

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How could she protect her island and her people when not only did she have no army, but the idea of women being in charge was seen as ridiculous? But now that he has been absent, she faces a difficult choice – remarry to remain in power or likely be assassinated.

It started out in the vein of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, but didn’t quite meet my expectations. No one wants a Queen running a country, no one believes she truly can, and now they believe Odysseus to be dead, suitors have come in droves to try and gain Penelope’s hand and, through it, the rule of Ithaca. Through Hera’s eyes, we get the perspective of many women besides Penelope, including Clytemnestra, Elektra, and Penelope’s maids. She becomes a well-rounded person, rather than a footnote, and it was so rewarding to learn about her smarts in keeping Ithaca safe amidst so much uncertainty and deceit. I taught the Odyssey for almost two decades, and I’ve always been curious about Penelope and her story for the twenty years Odysseus was away.From the suitors vying for her hand in marriage and the power that comes with it to the pirates threatening their shores to her sister hiding from her vengeance-seeking children, Penelope’s story is complex, filled with impossible obstacles, and riddled with danger.

But the stories that will live for ever are of the lost ones, the fearful ones, who through bitter hardship and despair find hope, find strength – find their way home. The addition of this being told from Hera’s POV though is what really takes the feminist undertone to a new level. The relationship between Penelope and Elektra is a very interesting one and it added a lot to my ever-growing knowledge of Greek mythology, so I definitely think that it’s a book worth reading if you have an interest in these stories.

The pen name of British author Catherine Webb, Claire North is best known for her genre-defying novels that merge science fiction with contemporary themes, including The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, The End of the Day and 84K. The author also introduced many, many characters (in true Classical Greek fashion), which left them all bland and interchangeable.

It was impossible to connect to any of the characters, which led to a lack of connection to the book as a whole, majorly detracting from my enjoyment of it. Some of her stories, or thought’s about the ‘heroes’ of Greek mythology, and Penelope’s suitors had me laughing out loud in parts and she certainly pulls no punches.Between Penelope’s many suitors, a cold war of dubious alliances and hidden knives reigns, as everyone waits for the balance of power to tip one way or another. While this could have meant we lack any kind of empathy of bonding with Penelope and the other humans we meet, I instead found I gained a deeper insight to them. Hera, the goddess of wives and narrator of Penelope's tale, tells the stories of women but also has much to say on the subject of men and her fellow Olympians vying for power. The Silence of the Girls and A Thousand Ships offered a feminist perspective, but Ithaca gives Penelope and the women of Ithaca real agency, even as they weaponize their veils and mourning customs, steal every advantage of silence, sex, gossip, and the appearance of meekness, and get away with, well, murder because men can't actually wrap their heads around women as capable and intelligent beings. A familiarity with the Greek pantheon and many of the stories in Greek mythology is essential to understanding Hera’s quips and barbs and references—the source of much of the humor in the narrative.