A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
I love mythology. I am the stereotypical gay boy who grew up devouring every piece of mythology I could get my hands on as a kid. So when I heard about a retelling of the Trojan War from the point of view of the women involved, I was amped! But, dear reader, I made it 40% and then decided that I could not do any more. My first DNF of the year. The structure of the book is that the muse of poetry is helping […]
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
” I see you. I see all who men call monsters.” This is the newest novel by Natalie Haynes, whose other recent books A Thousand Ships and Pandora’s Jar I also read this year. This is a novel and is structured more or less like A Thousand Ships, which takes on the broadest view of a given myth (in that book The Iliad) and tells it from multiple perspectives, not necessarily tackling the narrative in strict order. You can guess from the title and the […]
The Ancient Guide to Modern Life by Natalie Haynes
“I have been obsessed with the ancient world since I was eleven years old, when I begin learning about Roman life at school.” Classics is a subject that I have had to mild to passing interest in some ways, and earnest interest in others. I think I feel strongly about wanting to know more about Roman history, and Roman historical writing and philosophy, and not very much about Roman mythology. In the same way, I am earnestly interested in Greek mythology and philosophy, but then […]
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
“Sing, Muse, he sings, and the edge in his voice makes it clear that this is not a request.” I tend to shy away from modern retellings of fairy tales for reasons I’ve discussed in other reviews, but I really enjoy retellings of myths (though I like the straight retellings of them within their own context more than modern renderings of them in contemporary contexts). The difference I think is that I took a class in college reading myth as literature, and even though in […]
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
“The bards all sing of the bravery of the heroes and the greatness of your deeds: it is one of the few elements on which they all agree. But no one sings of the courage required by those of us who were left behind.” ― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships The more I read, the more I write, and the more I consume all forms of storytelling from films, to TV, to poetry, the more I realize how unfamiliar I am with the bases for […]
Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes
“When Harry Hamlin stood behind the pillar in the darkness of Medusa’s lair in the Ray Harryhausen film Clash of the Titans, flames flickering off his shield, his face glistening with sweat, my brother and I were transfixed.” So begins Natalie Haynes’s book Pandora’s Jar, which is not a retelling of myths like other of her novels or even much to say about Perseus even. Instead, the book is a reinvestigation (which often feels like a good, fun undergraduate lecture) of the ways in which various […]
