A Couple of the girls in my book group raved about how much they loved this book, so when in was an audible deal of the day I snapped it up.
Hmmm, I wouldn’t rave about it myself. Just because it is really like a series of short stories, following different characters related by being women connected to the Trojan wars (and I’m not a fan of short stories).
It is a familiar tale of women being horribly mistreated by men but having their own unique resilience and strength. I did like the recurring chapters narrated by Penelope as an open letter to her husband Odysseus which were basically a (really quite witty) sarcastic rant about him being away for so long and leaving her to raise their son and live alone dealing with all the day to day stuff he left behind when off on his adventures.
I said to one of my friends at book group that maybe I didn’t like it so much also because the narrator wasn’t very good – not parsing sentences correctly (in my opinion) and often sounding quite bored by it all, not realising at the time that the book is actually narrated by the author!
A similar book, which I enjoyed more is Circe by Madeline Miller.
Sarah Wray Writer 