Claire North

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/notes-from-the-burning-age-by-claire-north/

Occasionally I hit a book by a favourite author that doesn’t quite work for me, and I’m afraid this is one of those times. I’m generally a big fan of North’s writing, and I’m also a big fan of A Canticle for Leibowitz, to which this is in part a response. It’s the story of a future scholar dedicated to retrieving past knowledge in a post-apocalypse society, where rival power structures have mutually entangled espionage networks and cosmic principles are embodied.

I didn’t especially like any of the characters, but what put me off more was that although the story is mainly set in the cities and countryside of a devastated Central Europe, there is very little sense of place; the cities are interchangeable and everyone seems to speak the same language. This detachment from geography threw me right out of the narrative. Most people seem to like it much more than me.… (mere)

This is the second book in a trilogy by Claire North with an overall title of "The Songs of Penelope". I read the first book, Ithaca, in October last year, and enthused about how much I enjoyed this feminist re-telling of Greek myth and legend.

Each book in the trilogy is narrated in the first person by a different Greek goddess. In Ithaca it was the goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus. In the second book the narrator is the goddess Aphrodite, goddess of love. However, the books focus primarily on the character of Penelope, Odysseus' wife, left behind on Ithaca when her husband sailed off to Troy with the other Greek kings. They did so to fulfil an oath made to Menelaus, King of Sparta, to help him recover his beautiful wife Helen, taken to Troy by young Paris, a prince of that city. That was twenty years before this book begins, and the war has now been over for ten years, but Odysseus has not returned to Ithaca and is now widely presumed to be dead.

In his absence, his queen Penelope has been ably looking after her people on Ithaca while having to fend off a host of suitors for her hand in marriage, but who are more like parasites on her hospitality. Though she is not certain that Odysseus is alive, she refuses all their claims.

Life on Ithaca is not simple, however. Almost all of the island's adult men sailed with Odysseus to Troy and none returned. The island is therefore populated by old men and by fatherless youths only now reaching adulthood. And, of course, it is mostly populated by the women. Women who, strong and capable to begin with, have only become even stronger and more capable as time has passed.

In the first book, Penelope had to deal with pirates pillaging the towns of Ithaca. To counter these raids, Penelope secretly organised an army of women, armed largely with bows and knives, weapons easily explained away as just everyday tools for hunting and preparing meals.

Part-way through the first book, life for Penelope was severely disrupted by the arrival of Orestes and his sister Elektra, the children of King Agamemnon of Mycenae. Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra not long after he returned from Troy, and Orestes and Elektra come to Ithaca believing, correctly, that their mother fled to the island where her cousin Penelope reigns. Towards the end of the first book, Orestes kills his mother at the urging of Elektra, a killing in which Penelope is at least partially complicit.

As House of Odysseus opens, two years have passed, and Elektra returns in secret to Ithaca, in charge of her brother, who appears to have been driven mad by his act of matricide and because he is spiritually being hounded by the Furies, three ancient deities of vengeance. Orestes, of course, is now King of Mycenae, but is in no fit state to be seen or to rule. In desperation to keep his condition secret, Elektra has taken him on what is claimed to be a pious pilgrimage to shrines and temples.

Then Menelaus, King of Sparta, arrives in pomp at Ithaca's port with a large contingent of Spartan soldiers. Though he puts on a great show of bonhomie and professes nothing but friendship and assistance to Penelope, he essentially takes over the island. He's in search of Orestes because if he can take charge of him, Menelaus will declare Orestes incompetent, act as his regent, and in practice become King of all Greece. Though Penelope makes a determined effort to hide Orestes and Elektra, it's not long before the Spartans find them and bring them to the palace.

Along with Menelaus and all his soldiers, of course, also comes the wife of Menelaus—Helen of Troy, now twenty years older than when she was taken to Troy, but still the most beautiful of women. Her behaviour, though, is that of an empty-headed bimbo, often drunk, treated contemptuously by her husband. But, as we eventually discover, there are depths to her.

Penelope, too, has depths to her. She is very clever, and she is determined to out-manoeuvre Menelaus. And she has her secret army of women to help her.

I really liked all of this, it's a very engaging story and by concentrating on the largely-ignored women of the ancient tales, the author gives a fascinating and very fresh look at those old stories. There's some lovely pieces of writing, too, such as Penelope's bracing, unsympathetic monologue delivered to Orestes when he is whimpering for forgiveness:

“You want forgiveness, Orestes? It will never come. So either crawl into your hole and shrivel now, die now, or seek repentance for doing the needful thing. Make your repentance your strength. Build life over the ashes of your butcher father, your murdered mother. Where Agamemnon slaughtered Iphigenia, raise a shrine for unmarried girls, a place of safety in her name. Where Clytemnestra slew Agamemnon, set up courts of justice to bring back harmony to your land. Where you slew Clytemnestra, cast libations into the sand and make upon those shores treaties of peace, an end to bloodshed. Someone must end this story. It may as well be you.”

My only reservation with this book, as it was with the first in the trilogy, is that I'm not sure that the narration by the various goddesses is really convincing. Here, particularly at the start of the book, I wasn't sure that the narration by the goddess Aphrodite worked well, though it does allow her to tell, from her point of view, the story of the Judgement of Paris, which ends up with Aphrodite promising to give Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, which of course turns out to be Helen “the face that launched a thousand ships”, and which precipitates the "breaking of the world" when the Trojan War ensues.

Despite that small reservation, I'm greatly looking forward to the third and final book in the trilogy, The Last Song of Penelope, in which Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca. I’m thinking he’s not going to be received with open arms by Penelope, no matter what the legend may say.… (mere)