REVIEWS THE WOMEN OF TROY
ON LI N E E XC LUSI V ES
Pat Barker, Hamish Hamilton, 2021, £18.99, hb, 320pp, 9780241427231
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C L A SSIC A L ANTONIUS: Soldier of Fate Brook Allen, Dawg House, 2020, $17.95/£16.99, pb, 426pp, 9781732958548
42 BC. With Julius Caesar’s assassins now found and executed, Octavian’s rise to power is as fast as it is devious. Marcus Antonius wants to avoid further bloodshed and vies for peace, if only Octavian wouldn’t continually thwart his plans. Octavian seizes Marcus’s legions, refuses to send help when called, closes Roman ports to Marcus, and corners Marcus into marrying Octavian’s recently widowed and pregnant sister, Octavia. Despite the marriage, Marcus’s heart was long ago captured by Queen Cleopatra. Marcus and Cleopatra’s love blinds them to the everincreasing signs of loss and betrayal that will eventually culminate in the destruction of the last dynastic pharaoh of Egypt, as well as the lives they hold most dear. This book portrays the final 12 years of the life of, as he’s known today, “Mark Antony.” Because of the damnatio memoriae (damning a person’s memory), his life was virtually erased from ancient Rome. Even his birthday was declared a “black day.” Despite its being book 3 of a trilogy, I found it moderately easy to jump into the story, which opens directly within a conflict between Marcus and Octavian. Tension is high throughout as Marcus and Octavian try to outwit each other. The relationship between Marcus and his children adds emotional weight to the narrative. There are intriguing domestic and military details. What I found most captivating were the moments where Marcus makes choices that cost him the most, as the author does a commendable job bringing readers into Marcus’s point of view. It’s easy to understand his motivation and vision for a greater Rome. It also reaffirmed my belief that the world wasn’t ready for the progressiveness that Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius represented. Allen does a great job bringing fresh insight into a wellknown story, with an eye on historical details and character depth. J. Lynn Else
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In this immersive read, Pat Barker takes up the threads of her previous book, The Silence of the Girls, continuing the story after the fall of Troy. The victorious Greek troops wait to sail home with their booty. But the gods are offended. King Priam lies unburied, and until he is given due honours, the winds will not change direction and thus they cannot set sail. The book is told as both the captured women and the victors live in limbo, outside the city that has been laid to waste. Briseis lives with the other captured women survivors. She was a trophy wife to Achilles, now dead, and has been passed to Alcimus. The baby of Achilles kicks inside her as she tells her story, with other perspectives provided by the seer, Calchas, and Pyrrhus, son of Achilles. The latter, for his part, lives in the shadow of his dead father, and his character becomes a vehicle for Barker’s analysis of the fragility of masculinity. In the main this is a story told with a tight focus on the silenced voices of the women, raped, enslaved, and in fear of their lives. Their men and boys have been killed, down to (almost) every last male baby. This is a story of aftermath, of an uneasy peace as despairing women grieve, burning with resentment, whilst triumphant men confront their own bloody legacy. Briseis attempts to live a truthful life, supporting the other women as she does so, as far as she can. This is a compelling, characterful and beautifully written read. This modern classic is a story told by those often left voiceless in mythology, women who assert their own fragile agency to bear witness, defy where they can and to survive. Katharine Quarmby
DAUGHTERS OF SPARTA Claire Heywood, Dutton, 2021, $17.00, pb, 384pp, 9780593184370 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2021, £14.99, hb, 352pp, 9781529349931
Heywood retells a timeless story with fresh insight and poignancy in this debut novel exploring the battles fought by the women of the Trojan War. Alternating between the viewpoints of Klytemnestra and Helen, Heywood begins with
REVIEWS | Issue 97, August 2021
their childhood as daughters of the King of Sparta, when Klytemnestra, the ambitious and dutiful older sister, first finds her fate changed by her beautiful younger sibling. Both girls long for marital intimacy and companionship from the powerful men they marry, and both find their marriages lacking in different ways. When Paris shows up halfway through the book, Heywood has so skillfully built Helen’s inner life that it’s quite understandable why she runs away with the handsome prince. Equally convincing, and wrenching, is Klytemnestra’s stunned rage and grief when her husband Agamemnon sacrifices their beautiful daughter Iphigenia for a fair wind to war. The key events of the famous epic are only touched on, but the emotional resonance is by no means slight: Heywood doesn’t spare the grief of Andromache, or Queen Hekuba, or the young princess Kassandra as their men are killed and Troy burns. Home in Mycenae, Klytemnestra enjoys a joyful union with the noble Aegisthos, but hanging over her head is her vengeful promise that, if her husband returns from war, she’ll kill him herself. The trappings of the Bronze Age tale are present, as well as the seeds of the great Greek tragedies. But stripped of ornament or the intervention of the gods, the direct, luminous pose is a setting for human longings, ambitions, and vanities, as when Helen realizes the armies aren’t actually fighting for her: “What did men ever sacrifice for the sake of a woman?” This is my favorite version yet of this oft-told tale, making dimensional and persuasive characters of much-mythologized women. Highly recommended. Misty Urban
A NC I E N T H I STORY YASODHARA AND THE BUDDHA Vanessa R. Sasson, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, $22.95, pb, 293pp, 9781350163164
When Prince Siddhartha begins the series of pilgrimages that lead to his becoming the Buddha, he leaves behind his wife, who is pregnant with his son. Yasodhara and the Buddha imagines her young life in beautiful, lyrical episodes that evoke the Indian hagiographic tradition of the Jataka, the sacred stories told about the god and his existence on earth. A first-person account, the novel provides an intimate portrayal of the noblewoman who marries Siddhartha when they are both sixteen. The prince chooses Yasodhara, his cousin, from among the ladies of his realm
