Reply to March 2025 - What are you reading?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"The Voyage Home" by Pat Barker. It's the last in her Trojan War trilogy and came out a few months ago.

I still think "The Silence of the Girls," the first book concerning Briseis and the start of the war, is the strongest in the trilogy. [/quote]

Would you recommend the trojan war trilogy? Any new or unique takes from the same old story?[/quote]

I could write an essay on this, haha! It depends on what you're read and enjoyed. There's a glut of Greek retellings from female perspectives right now, but I think Pat Barker is one of the stronger writers in this genre. She was listed for the Booker prize for "Silence of the Girls," which can stand alone as a book. The trilogy follow more minor female Iliad characters.

Madeline Miller's "Song of Achilles" and "Circe" are both extremely popular, and they're solid novels. "Circe" is kind of a fun perspective that is not entirely focused on the Trojan War. Natalie Haynes is also pretty prevalent in this genre and has written "A Thousand Ships" (pretty good) as well as individual novels about Medusa (pretty strong), Medea (haven't read), and Jocasta (eh). Jennifer Saint also writes individual novels about Greek women, like "Elektra," "Ariadne," and "Atalanta." I don't feel strongly about any of those novels; they were entertaining but perhaps not groundbreaking in their perspective anymore. I enjoyed "Clytemnestra" by Costanza Casati.

Colm Toibon wrote "House of Names" as a retelling of the Oresteia (so immediately post-Trojan War). "Ithaca" by Claire North is about what was going on while Odysseus was away, and it is also the start of a trilogy. I quite liked it, though it's fairly dense comparatively.

Ok so finally, I want to put in a plug for "Bright Air Black," by David Vann. It's an utterly bizarre, surreal novel about Medea and Jason and the Argonauts (so, well before the Trojan War). It does not take a contemporary perspective, and in fact makes clear how alien the Greeks' thinking and behavior would be to us. [/quote]

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