Ithaca: The exquisite, gripping tale that breathes life into ancient myth (The Songs of Penelope)

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Athena loves it when a hunky warrior clad in bronze kneels before her inner sanctum, and when a man violated a woman upon her altar, it was the woman whose hair she turned to snakes in retribution for this sacrilege. Yes, some writing was beginning to seep into the Greek world at this time, but not on a daily or meaningful basis. Other plus points for me were the relationships between Penelope and Clytemnestra and Penelope and Telemachus and the characterisation of Electra. The voices and world are distinctly the Greek myths we all know and yet there is so much more depth. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

We regard them as one might regard a rash – hopeful that it does not spread further – and then move on.The story follows Penelope, Hera, Clytemnestra, and so many more women who are often glossed over in stories like The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Hera, being a god, can not only tell us what's going on in Ithaca and in her surroundings, but what is happening to Odysseus at the same time (she wryly gives us updates, most of which center on her sarcastic descriptions of him being so tortured about being sexily held prisoner on Ogygia with Calypso). The author chose to tell the story from the goddess Hera’s POV rather than Penelope – I think this was a big mistake, as it made the story feel divorced from Penelope’s emotions and feelings.So instead they became beasts performing sacrilege upon the living and the dead, for their fathers had taught them no other way to be a man than to howl at the crimson sun.