Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Ariadne

I'm a simple woman, I see feminist greek retelling and I read

Buuuuut this one disappointed a bit. I enjoyed reading it, the writing is as pointed out in my cover "lyrical".
However, it does not do what it sets out to do.

Ariadne as a character lacks luster as she is very passive.

She has barely any role in defeating the Minotaur (Dedalous gives her the thread and Phaedra steals the weapon), with this characterization one wonders how she even had the conviction to betray her father (I guess the explanation is her falling in love immediately by looking at Theseus....istg).
While she lives in Naxos with Dionysus she also shows no interest in the sister she left behind or on what her husband does on their island.

She is lulled by her comfortable beliefs and leaves everything at that.

When the two sisters came to be reunited I thought the story's purpose might be revealed, that it would be about these two woman and their bond (once again pointing to the supposed feminist undercurrent of the book), but the only reason Phaedra went to Naxos was to further her plot and they seemed to add nothing to each other.

Through the book there is an emphasis on the gods being careless and cruel and innocent humans, particularly woman, suffering for it. This attempt at criticizing the treatment of woman in classical myth falls short as the plot of the book goes by. You would think Ariadne would go against this and, even if the ending had to be as in the myth, she would be shown fighting her fate.

Yet, she merely goes where she is pushed most of the time and both Phaedra's and her death feel pointless and void of meaning.

Phaedra's struggle with motherhood seems to also be looking to shed some feminist light, but the message gets lost along the way.

At the beggining of the book Ariadne
speaks of seizing her destiny for herself, but we see her do nothing of the sort throughout the book. In her own words, after a decade of marriage, she says "I had been trusting and obedient. I had thought that was the right way to be". She ends up being disappointed by Dionysus also and it seems the only lesson to be learned is a weird dichotomy of men are bad and woman good mixed with a Madonna-whore complex where woman who reclaimed and used their power were seen as evil (Medea and Hera, for example) while passive woman like Ariadne were good.

I realize this is to be a tragedy, but why retell a story if not to shine a new light on it? The women end the story the way they began, Ariadne without purpose and Phaedra miserable and heavy with humiliation.

It is not a terrible book, it was enjoyable to read - it just didn't convey its own message. If you have started it searching for something akin to Madeleine Miller's Circe, you will not be totally satisfied.

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niyou's review against another edition

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If you want to read something similar to Circe, keep looking. This book doesn’t compare: the prose is indifferent and the characters are annoying and flat. Around a quarter through I realized I didn’t care enough to keep reading.

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ficteon's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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ahse1dances's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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cgoiris's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Men, whether immortal or temporarily made of flesh, will disappoint you when you allow them to make your happiness instead of finding it for yourself. That, to me, is the tragic conclusion of this story.

I know the source material was there and limited the outcomes, but to me Ariadne, Phaedra and the maenads all have one fatal flaw above all else: just when they think they're taking hold of their own fate or happiness, they actually throw it at the mercy of men.

(slight spoiler although the original story has existed for many many years) Phaedra's tragic ending, skipped over too casually, is the closest she gets to actually taking control. Ariadne never truly does.

When I was young, I saw in Ariadne a symbol of defiance. This story started out weaving her into one, but then lost her to the simple narrative of women getting blinded by their own feelings and it just could have done more, could have done better, than make her into a naive hormonal girl who thinks that a beautiful boy must be saved. Could have made her motivations her own. It should have warned me against reading the rest of the book, honestly.

I dared hope for more, and the author punished me for my hubris.

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