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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
''It was the women, always the women, be they helpless serving girls or princesses, who paid the price.''
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is not a book for Madeline Miller's fans. It is not a feminist retelling of the story. And it is not, by any means, a well-written book. It is blunt, boring, and it lacks in character depth and basic storytelling.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A truly wild amount of this book is dialogue by people in a myth recounting other myths. 5 pages of Theseus telling a story about how Heracles did some rad stuff is… not my scene.
If you've read circe you'll really enjoy this, I found it slow to start but overall it was a good read!
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The title character is easily the least interesting character in the book. That's a serious problem for a supposedly feminist retelling, especially considering that Theseus is portrayed a two-dimensional manchild, yet still has more personality and development than Ariadne.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
There needs to be a term for this crop of dry toast myth retellings that are like … “this is the story of my entire life and it was basically abject misery from start to finish but god forbid you actually feel any of that misery. Oh and it’s supposedly a women-centric narrative but nothing happens until my life intersects with a man. A man who will make me miserable. Have I mentioned that part?”
Please don’t think I’m against reading about tragic myths . I bring this book up all the time, but the Silence of the Girls gave me a literal panic it was so visceral. And the reason for it is it made you feel the minute by minute terror of the siege, and then the day by day drudgery of trying to maintain dignity as a wartime captive.
Ariadne, meanwhile, never ever lingers in one moment. Well except when men are explaining things to Ariadne or Phaedra. Then we get entire paragraphs dedicated to that.
But otherwise the narratives starts at a breakneck pace and never stops, desperate to hit all the narrative points. Do you want to really feel what it was like to grow up in creepy, claustrophobic Crete after the horrific scandal of the Minotaur’s birth? Too bad. Ariadne will tell you it was an awful time but you’re not going to get any scenes illustrating how she and her siblings were harmed by the gossip that ensued.
And so it goes on and on. A Wikipedia page with only a little more personality.
Here’s a passage I highlighted that shows what I mean. Phaedra has just been married to Theseus here:
“At Knossos, our family disgrace trailed behind us like a chain we were forced to drag, pulling us down, tripping us up. In Athens, I was amazed to find I could move freely, without its weight. Instead of condemnation, I found sympathy.”
No, you don’t get any scenes with this supposed sympathy. You get one (1) scene with a named courtier and that’s it. Phaedra’s scenes as a queen of Athens are almost as devoid of named characters as the scenes with Ariadne living entirely alone on an island.
Also a few pages later we get:
“A princess was a princess, wherever she was, and in Athens, like Crete, the pastimes available seemed limited to weaving, dancing, and smiling at men.”
Which is really funny when a few pages before we got this:
“I grieved for my sister still, but life in the Athenian court was full of diversions, and in Theseus’ lengthy absences, I flourished as I had never done on Crete.”
So like … which is it? Are you flourishing or are you stifled? Both things can be true but if they are we NEED actual! Scenes! With dialogue! So we can feel this ambivalence!!!
And then, incredibly, a few pages after THIS we get some scenes with Phaedra talking to the aforementioned courtier and becoming involved in local politics. It shows her flourishing way more than her saying she was flourishing ever did. Which shows the author can do the show and not tell thing which is probably why I feel so harsh towards this book. There are just enough moments where you can see the potential and then … it slides back into being a Wikipedia entry. Like you get a pretty vivid portion of the book where Ariadne is going half mad with isolation. It’s even worse for her when she does have Dionysus because sometimes he leaves and the isolation feels worse. Eventually women permanently move to the island and … there should be this palpable relief for Ariadne. That she finally has companions. Specifically companions who have been just as hurt by life as she has been. But no. There’s no reaction to this change of circumstances. It’s just “and this happened and this happened and this happened.” We only hear from one of the Maenads when she has an anecdote to tell that will end up foreshadowing violent forest revels.
Speaking of which… this is that type of book that always seems to want the human female character to be this bland paragon set against the behavior of the gods. This is how we get an Ariadne who’s with Dionysus for well over a decade but doesn’t seem to know about the Maenads tearing animals apart. Even though she sees them washing out the blood the next day and looking dead-eyed. And then they have a bickering fight about it that feels more like he forgot to take the garbage out. And it’s like … so why should we care again? Ariadne seems to barely care even though we’re told it’s basically a mortal wound to their marriage.
Give me an Ariadne whose nauseated over how far her life has drifted from being a mundane human! Or give me an Ariadne who tells herself she should be upset and tries to be but discovers that she kind of LIKES doing atrocities because at least now she has power after a lifetime of having people controlling and hurting her! Give me anything with some passion and a goddamn pulse to it! That’s why we like these stories in the first place! We’re shuddering at the horrors of war or giddy that the abandoned princess found a better husband or disgusted by all the weird animal-god/human couplings or sorrowful when shockingly human moments come down to us through the centuries (like Priam kissing Achilles hands and asking for his son’s body back! Or Briseis in a book millennia later thinking many women have had to go to bed with the same men that killed their own children.)
Instead we get… honestly, not even a Wikipedia page now that I’m thinking about it. You can go down some fun rabbit holes there and it can get you thinking. This is more like the book versions of those tweets that are like “DAE think zeus is a jerk? DAE hate Odysseus for cheating on his wife?”
It’s all just so unbearably tedious. I genuinely don’t understand how Euripedes, writing all those thousands of years ago, was able to take the framework of the tragedies heaped on the Trojan women and actually write something where you can feel their agony and also see parallels to your own time (both his day and for audiences in years to come.) I don’t know why this is so impossible for so many modern writers. This annoying genre of book always ends up extolling humanity (when compared to the gods) but they just write the most inhuman, boring characters.
Please don’t think I’m against reading about tragic myths . I bring this book up all the time, but the Silence of the Girls gave me a literal panic it was so visceral. And the reason for it is it made you feel the minute by minute terror of the siege, and then the day by day drudgery of trying to maintain dignity as a wartime captive.
Ariadne, meanwhile, never ever lingers in one moment. Well except when men are explaining things to Ariadne or Phaedra. Then we get entire paragraphs dedicated to that.
But otherwise the narratives starts at a breakneck pace and never stops, desperate to hit all the narrative points. Do you want to really feel what it was like to grow up in creepy, claustrophobic Crete after the horrific scandal of the Minotaur’s birth? Too bad. Ariadne will tell you it was an awful time but you’re not going to get any scenes illustrating how she and her siblings were harmed by the gossip that ensued.
And so it goes on and on. A Wikipedia page with only a little more personality.
Here’s a passage I highlighted that shows what I mean. Phaedra has just been married to Theseus here:
“At Knossos, our family disgrace trailed behind us like a chain we were forced to drag, pulling us down, tripping us up. In Athens, I was amazed to find I could move freely, without its weight. Instead of condemnation, I found sympathy.”
No, you don’t get any scenes with this supposed sympathy. You get one (1) scene with a named courtier and that’s it. Phaedra’s scenes as a queen of Athens are almost as devoid of named characters as the scenes with Ariadne living entirely alone on an island.
Also a few pages later we get:
“A princess was a princess, wherever she was, and in Athens, like Crete, the pastimes available seemed limited to weaving, dancing, and smiling at men.”
Which is really funny when a few pages before we got this:
“I grieved for my sister still, but life in the Athenian court was full of diversions, and in Theseus’ lengthy absences, I flourished as I had never done on Crete.”
So like … which is it? Are you flourishing or are you stifled? Both things can be true but if they are we NEED actual! Scenes! With dialogue! So we can feel this ambivalence!!!
And then, incredibly, a few pages after THIS we get some scenes with Phaedra talking to the aforementioned courtier and becoming involved in local politics. It shows her flourishing way more than her saying she was flourishing ever did. Which shows the author can do the show and not tell thing which is probably why I feel so harsh towards this book. There are just enough moments where you can see the potential and then … it slides back into being a Wikipedia entry. Like you get a pretty vivid portion of the book where Ariadne is going half mad with isolation. It’s even worse for her when she does have Dionysus because sometimes he leaves and the isolation feels worse. Eventually women permanently move to the island and … there should be this palpable relief for Ariadne. That she finally has companions. Specifically companions who have been just as hurt by life as she has been. But no. There’s no reaction to this change of circumstances. It’s just “and this happened and this happened and this happened.” We only hear from one of the Maenads when she has an anecdote to tell that will end up foreshadowing violent forest revels.
Speaking of which… this is that type of book that always seems to want the human female character to be this bland paragon set against the behavior of the gods. This is how we get an Ariadne who’s with Dionysus for well over a decade but doesn’t seem to know about the Maenads tearing animals apart. Even though she sees them washing out the blood the next day and looking dead-eyed. And then they have a bickering fight about it that feels more like he forgot to take the garbage out. And it’s like … so why should we care again? Ariadne seems to barely care even though we’re told it’s basically a mortal wound to their marriage.
Give me an Ariadne whose nauseated over how far her life has drifted from being a mundane human! Or give me an Ariadne who tells herself she should be upset and tries to be but discovers that she kind of LIKES doing atrocities because at least now she has power after a lifetime of having people controlling and hurting her! Give me anything with some passion and a goddamn pulse to it! That’s why we like these stories in the first place! We’re shuddering at the horrors of war or giddy that the abandoned princess found a better husband or disgusted by all the weird animal-god/human couplings or sorrowful when shockingly human moments come down to us through the centuries (like Priam kissing Achilles hands and asking for his son’s body back! Or Briseis in a book millennia later thinking many women have had to go to bed with the same men that killed their own children.)
Instead we get… honestly, not even a Wikipedia page now that I’m thinking about it. You can go down some fun rabbit holes there and it can get you thinking. This is more like the book versions of those tweets that are like “DAE think zeus is a jerk? DAE hate Odysseus for cheating on his wife?”
It’s all just so unbearably tedious. I genuinely don’t understand how Euripedes, writing all those thousands of years ago, was able to take the framework of the tragedies heaped on the Trojan women and actually write something where you can feel their agony and also see parallels to your own time (both his day and for audiences in years to come.) I don’t know why this is so impossible for so many modern writers. This annoying genre of book always ends up extolling humanity (when compared to the gods) but they just write the most inhuman, boring characters.