Ithaca

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But what makes it unique is the fact that, instead of being told from Penelope’s pov, it’s instead narrated by Hera, Greek Goddess, wife of Zeus, who risks her husbands ire by delving into the lives of men and inserting her influence to help Penelope along the way. How the poet’s never quite get the story right, focusing on all the glory, but never how they got there or what happened afterwards. From the multi award-winning Claire North comes a daring, exquisite and moving tale that breathes life into ancient myth and tells of the women who stand defiant in a world ruled by ruthless men.

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. That being said, North’s prose and the fluidity of her storytelling made the story, which dealt with some truly heavy topics, flow with an ease that had me reading huge chunks in one go, never quite willing, or ready, to put it down. I’ve not read any of Claire North’s work before and was quite aware of her many novels that are more towards science fiction. It is told by the goddess Hera, who feels largely forgotten by the poets in the shadow of her husband Zeus, and step daughters, Athena and Artemis. The narration is so scathing of all the gods, particularly Zeus, playing on the diminished role of Hera compared to some of the earlier mythologies.I’m definitely interested to see where the next book goes, anyway, as I don’t think I’ve heard much about the events that follow so I’m already very intrigued! It would then only shift the narrative from the men to the gods, and not to the women that have already been unheard for so long. Hera was a flighty narrator, not always just telling Penelope’s story, but also wandering off and telling many other ones, and a lot of these characters had names that were similar.

In a daring and completely successful innovation, Dillon has shifted the emotional center of the story from Odysseus to the innocents he has injured. Dillon’s use of the father-son bond and their parallel journeys—Odysseus’s traumatic, meandering trip toward home and Telemachus’s turbulent ascent to manhood—is as rich as it is complex. North also expressed how the poets of Greece were men, who only immortalized manly things and, when forced to record a story where a woman was at the fore, would find ways to twist it and make her less so that men felt like more. Despite Penelope being the eponymous character, the book is told from the perspective of the Goddess Hera. It took me a while to get my head around the different mindset that Penelople’s character is in here, as I was eager to be drawn in by her emotional story again.

The best part of the story was Penelope’s careful weaving of plots and plans meant to keep Ithaca stable, while maintaining the image of the demure and grieving woman and wife. North's clear, barbed, and emotionally distant narrative style is a perfect fit for her subject matter.

I've been waiting for a Penelopiad for very long now, dissatisfied as I've been by other books purporting to tell "The Odyssey" from the side of the hero's wife, so I picked this book up with much hope and excitement. The author also used modern words and phrases scattered throughout the work which completely broke the little immersion there was with this book. So instead they became beasts performing sacrilege upon the living and the dead, for their fathers had taught them no other way to be a man than to howl at the crimson sun. In addition to tactfully handling the volatile situation with her suitors, she is also troubled by the presence of a queen being hunted by her vengeful children for murdering their father.

The gods are foolish and blind – they think the greatest poems are the ones of death in battle and the ravishing of queens. There is a lot of potential in the beautiful writing (and sometimes interesting, more contemporary, phrasings) in Ithaca though. Claire North is actually Catherine Webb, a Carnegie Medal-nominated young-adult novel author whose first book, Mirror Dreams, was written when she was just 14 years old.