Published in 2019 by Mantle (imprint of Pan Macmillan).
Trigger warning: Sexual assault, violence and war.
'This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them...'
Blurb: In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash...
The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across the oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all...
My thoughts:
I've always felt a deeper connection to greek mythology than anything else, for some reason unknown to me, I find it so compelling. Recently, various authors have given the silent women in mythology their dues. From Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls to Madeline Miller's Circe, there have been some beautifully depictions, and when I think I wouldn't find another one to add to this list so soon, oh god was I wrong. These stories have different perspectives but are all told from Calliope, the goddess of epic poetry. Her small introductory chapters take on the rhythm and form of a poem slotted gracefully throughout the novel, answering the pleas of inspiration from the mortal poet.
“But this is a women's war, just as much as it is the men's, and the poet will look upon their pain - the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men - and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn.”
Told from an all-female perspective (and not in chronological order), the voices in this book were all uniquely powerful. Whether it was the young girls, the women, or the goddesses Natalie Haynes gives a story to those that up until recently have just been a secondary characters in a story told by men and their male heroes.
I have to admit, first of all, I struggled to connect with some of the female characters such as Creusa and the goddesses. I suppose it was because Creusa was the first pov, and her story was sadly brief but even the pace of her narrative felt a little jarring, it took me longer than normal to get into it, yet still when her story ended I was left feeling her grief as I did with all of them.
Being such a huge lover of greek mythology, I was left feeling like I wanted more from the goddesses, after reading Miller's Circe I was craving more of a godly voice, but nevertheless, this story wasn't really about them. But the women who suffered in the war.
Those things aside, after a jarring start with Creusa, I felt the story really took flight. As the Trojan women were waiting on the beach to be sorted and taken away, you really got to see each of them being so beautifully different and dealing with grief in their own way. Cassandra's madness bubbling over, Polyxena's comforting touch, Andromache cradling her baby and Hecabe, sitting on a rock as if it were still her throne of Troy. Haynes really captures grief in all its forms. You can see the level of writing and research here reaching beyond the Iliad and the Odyssey to find their voices. It wasn't a portrait of helpless victims, there was strength in the grief, and even though their fates were tragic they didn't falter to meet it.
I really took to how Haynes wrote Penelope's story, taken in the form of letters to her husband Odysseus. You could see the withdrawal as the novel wore on, you couldn't ignore the empathy you felt towards her, I remember being so furious with Odysseus for not returning home straight away, Penelope heartbreak was so strong. Unlike the others, Odysseus was alive and wasn't killed (at least not physically) but still her grief was just as strong as the others. In the end she realises, that her Odysseus never came home but she still shows her thanks for the goddess Athene for her part in her husbands story.
Unlike Andromache, whose husband was killed by Achilles and dragged around the walls of Troy. Given to Achilles' son Neoptolemus after the war, she is riddled with grief of Hector and her fallen city, she doesn't fall in love with her captor but grows to be there for him and bare him another son, but her detachment stays right until the end, as if a part of her character died on the beach in Troy, it's a talent to grasp grief in this way and writers often struggle with it. I expected more of a love tragedy with her grieving Hector, but their relationship wasn't that prominent, it was more the loss of their child and the loss of her life in Troy that gave her such a refreshing perspective, she wasn't defined by Hector.
I've tried to fight it over the years but I am such a hopeless romantic, I always find myself wanting a love story. I found it in this book, in the voice of Laodamia and her husband Protesilaus. When her husband was one of the first men to die on the beaches of Troy, her grief almost tore at me. The way she describes the smaller details of her husband before he left for war was poetic and warm.
''You must promise not to be first' she said. His pretty brow- the thing she had loved most about him from the beginning, the slight crease between his eyes'...'You must let your ship lag behind the others, when you land at Troy''
Her strength didn't lie in her resilience but her love for her husband because that too is powerful, to love so deeply amidst war. When he is killed and Hades grants permission for him to visit her one last time, I was sobbing, I felt every word and every emotion. It may be the romantic in me, but I felt Laodamia to be one of my favourites in the entire book, her ending of following her husband into the afterlife struck so deeply with me. Her voice was beautifully done.
Overall, this book was amazing. I didn't want it to end, I wanted more, to know more. Natalie Haynes's A Thousand Ships left me a sobbing mess, but isn't that was the best books do? I would definitely recommend this book, not only to lovers of greek mythology but to those who love strong females leads and stories of strength and resiliences in hard times.
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