There is a glut of books right now based on mythology told from a maligned woman’s perspective. While I enjoy getting to see myths reinterpreted from a different perspective, it’s hard to write a happy story when you look at the source material, where women primarily served as a foe or a plaything. It’s comparable to the trend of telling a story from a well-established villain’s perspective that you have no backstory on. Both, when done well, and with a good enough kernel of source material, can be enjoyable and eye-opening.
But one of things that can be very tricky about these stories is capturing the humanity of the character and providing the reader to empathize with them. This is what Madeline Miller does so incredibly well. Costanza Casati, in centering her story around Clytemnestra, has a heroine that suffers more than her fair share of tragedy. Wife to Agamemnon and sister to Helen, she is raised in brutal Sparta where fighting and whipping are par for the course, tears are for the weak, and sympathy is overrated. And even then, those are the peak years of Clytemnestra’s life – she thrives with this mindset. This helps her survive everything that is to come, but her stoicism as her losses and injustices pile up make it hard for the reader to fully embrace everything she has suffered.
Clytemnestra’s mental mindset is always on the long game, planning how to get her revenge on the people that are foolish to think they have her in hand. This is enjoyable of course, flipping the script from a woman seen as a power-hungry betrayer; instead viewed from the perspective of someone who had to fight for herself, her worth, and demand respect. But I still felt like I should have been gutted emotionally living her experiences and I was more distanced than I felt I should have been.
The story itself many readers may already be aware of, albeit from me-man, me-powerful perspective. The more in depth look at more household affairs is a different one, but for much of the book the plotting felt slow developing as a result. More engaging scenes take place in the book that force the reader back into the book, but the general storyline follows the long game approach of Clytemnestra herself. With a longer than average length for a novel, clocking in at almost 450 pages, this means one of the first more shocking scenes doesn’t come until almost 40% of the way through the book. I’ll confess that until that point it was hard for me to be as invested. The scenes cluster closer together from that point forward, driving the story along, but the lulls can be a struggle. I liked the book, but it still felt overly long, with parts that could have been left out to clean up pacing some. Good, but it doesn’t quite meet the gold standard. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
But one of things that can be very tricky about these stories is capturing the humanity of the character and providing the reader to empathize with them. This is what Madeline Miller does so incredibly well. Costanza Casati, in centering her story around Clytemnestra, has a heroine that suffers more than her fair share of tragedy. Wife to Agamemnon and sister to Helen, she is raised in brutal Sparta where fighting and whipping are par for the course, tears are for the weak, and sympathy is overrated. And even then, those are the peak years of Clytemnestra’s life – she thrives with this mindset. This helps her survive everything that is to come, but her stoicism as her losses and injustices pile up make it hard for the reader to fully embrace everything she has suffered.
Clytemnestra’s mental mindset is always on the long game, planning how to get her revenge on the people that are foolish to think they have her in hand. This is enjoyable of course, flipping the script from a woman seen as a power-hungry betrayer; instead viewed from the perspective of someone who had to fight for herself, her worth, and demand respect. But I still felt like I should have been gutted emotionally living her experiences and I was more distanced than I felt I should have been.
The story itself many readers may already be aware of, albeit from me-man, me-powerful perspective. The more in depth look at more household affairs is a different one, but for much of the book the plotting felt slow developing as a result. More engaging scenes take place in the book that force the reader back into the book, but the general storyline follows the long game approach of Clytemnestra herself. With a longer than average length for a novel, clocking in at almost 450 pages, this means one of the first more shocking scenes doesn’t come until almost 40% of the way through the book. I’ll confess that until that point it was hard for me to be as invested. The scenes cluster closer together from that point forward, driving the story along, but the lulls can be a struggle. I liked the book, but it still felt overly long, with parts that could have been left out to clean up pacing some. Good, but it doesn’t quite meet the gold standard. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.