I thought this was so good. The cover was fantastic and I loved that as I read this one (I bought this in hardcover yesterday at a local bookstore) the cover sparkled. Higgins does a great job of following Greek myths through many of its famous women, but they are all linked by the loom and their weave depicting some of the terrible things the gods and goddesses have done. We start off with Gaia and Uranus and how their offspring where the Titans. And of course we follow on how eventually Zeus and his brothers and sisters usurped Cronus and then the Greek gods/goddesses as we know them just run amok. I like that Higgins shows the brutality of the gods/goddesses in this one. As a kid reading the Greek myths I always felt put out by how it was just kind of shrugged by how much Zeus ran around abducting maidens (Higgins calls it rape which it was and she shows the aftermath of it for the women in question). The book follows all the way to the end of the Odysseus, but I always thought that Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad was a better ending to the story of Penelope and Odysseus.
Athena weaves and shows the beginning of the gods/goddesses and men. Alcithoe weaves and shows us the beginning of the cult of Dionysus and the tragic tale of Oedipus. Philomela is a tragic and dark tale. A young woman and her sister, Procne who long to be birds to explore the world around them, but Procne’s husband has other terrible ideas about Philomela. Arachne who shows us the true ugliness of the gods, and in the end still loses to Athena (who honestly sucks). Andromache who knows that she’s destined to lose her husband Hector all because of his awful brother and the woman who launched a thousand ships, Helen. And of course Helen, Helen who I had sympathy for while reading, Helen who is smarter than she appears who knows that she has no way to get out of something that was honestly between three goddesses who caused so much war and strife. And who we know grieves for the children she birthed from Paris and the life she knew before him, with him, and now in her years now with her husband Menelaus, ready to drink to forget. Circe weaves and sees so many of the women who were tossed aside by men, women like her niece Medea and Ariadne. Penelope of course ends the book and we get to see her jealousy and exhaustion dealing with Odysseus being gone and having to deal with the suitors who would marry her. She also sees the end of Clytemnestra and the terrible end of Cassandra.
Some of my favorite passages which Higgins turns some of the myths on their heads:
Alcithoe:
“A god can spy on a woman as much as he likes, it seems, though a man may no, even by mistake, glimpse a naked goddess.
Philomela:
“Not like that! cried Pygmalion, suddenly furious. “Go back to the couch. Lie down. Please. I arranged you so beautifully. She had no idea what he was saying, but every newly awakened instinct in her body was telling her to get away from him. He made to grab her, but in truth he was terrified. This is not what he thought he had made, this dishevelled woman with sweat glinting off her clavicle, this woman shrieking like something escaped from Hades, this woman now staggering towards the door and her liberty.
Looking down from Olympus, Aphrodite smiled to herself, then shrugged, and started to comb out her long, shining hair.”
Helen:
“But Priam–and his eldest son, Hector, Paris’s brother–knew that Helen was a pretext. There was always an excuse for war, some symbol or stand-in. It was often a woman; this time it was Helen. What the Greeks really wanted, all along, was Troy’s wealth They wanted the treasuries of her temples emptied out, her women lined up and shared out-soft bodies on which to vent their rage and greed.”
Circe:
“But Jason didn’t tell Medea all that he knew about Theseus and Ariadne. He didn’t tell her that after the pair escaped from Crete they put in for the night on the island of Naxos. He didn’t tell her that early in the morning, before it was light, when Ariadne was still asleep, Theseus ordered his crew to put to sea without her, leaving her all alone on the shore–betraying her, breaking all his promises to her.”
“A the death of their king and his daughter the Corinthians started rioting; they were a mob, terrifying in their cries for vengeance. Medea’s boys did as they had been instructed by their mother. To keep safe, to keep them from harm, they should run to the temple of Hera, where no one would hurt them. But the Corinthians ignored the sanctity of the temple. They turned on those children….When Medea heard the dreadful news….But that’s not what happened. As the rabble approached, her doors swung open and she came outside. At the sight of her, the mob fell back–they were blinded, burned, by the deadly, shimmering heat that came from her.”
Penelope:
“Inside the palace, Clytemnestra led her husband through to the bath, and, with smooth assurance, helped him strip off his clothes.”
