A review by berenikeasteria
The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes

2.0

I just didn’t enjoy this one, but like another reviewer has said, it wasn’t due to poor writing on Haynes’ part, more poor storytelling. From a linguistic point of view, Haynes writes well. The vocabulary she draws upon is clearly broad, and the writing style is mature. By that I mean it has sophisticated construction, as opposed to the narrower vocabulary and simpler sentence construction of books aimed at younger readers. Haynes’ writing does lack a certain imagination and creative flair when it comes to imagery, but all in all it is complex, competent, and carefully considered.

It was the aspects of authorial choice in the storytelling that turned me off this one. For example, though it may initially seem like a small point, I found it irritating that Haynes chose to call Jocasta’s children – Eteokles, Polyneikes, Antigone, and Ismene – Eteo, Polyn, Ani, and Isy. I recoiled every time I came across it – and that was a lot. I can maybe understand an author doing this when writing a historical novel where characters share the same first name, but none do in this story. I didn’t like the nicknames because they were so incredibly modern, I was jarred right out of the story every time they came up. That wasn’t helped when, in the early chapters of the book, we find a teenaged Jocasta arguing with her parents about her arranged marriage to an old man. It felt out of place and deeply anachronistic. Marrying for love is the dominant model in the modern world, but in the ancient world that was far from the case. Young girls in the bronze age Near East could expect to be married off at a young age, and for the match to be arranged by her father (or other leading male relative), with advancing her family and making a match for security being the primary concerns in the deal. And no, I’m not saying that no bronze age girl in this position ever once raised a protest, just that it wouldn’t have come as a huge surprise, and combined with other elements in the story I began to get a sense of anachronism that permeated my reading experience.

Probably the biggest disappointment for me was how Haynes changes the Oedipus myth. I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of reimaginings which aimed to remove all the fantastical elements and try to construct a plausible ‘historical’ telling of the tale. Haynes’ book also aims for a more historical version. But she also cuts certain non-fantastical elements from the myth that would seem to me to be crucial to the story of Oedipus and Jocasta. For example,

Spoiler

Oedipus here is not caught in a terrible incestuous union with Jocasta, realised only after the fact.

That story element is absolutely integral to the tale, such that I’m not sure it can even be called Oedipus without it. Haynes cut out the essence of the story, and what she replaced it with was a much less interesting, insular family drama, on a much smaller scale.

Spoiler

The civil war between Eteokles and Polyneikes just isn’t as gripping when it’s a shouting match between the two men.

And, despite all her efforts to put the women of the story front and centre, Jocasta and Ismene still felt like side characters – especially Ismene, who didn’t feel any more enthralling for the author having taken some of Antigone’s key traits and having them awarded to her instead.

Finally, I simply didn’t relish the voice of the audiobook, Kristin Atherton. Her female characters were all high-pitched and girlish, though at least they conveyed emotion, and her men a low monotone that sucked any and all personality out of them. Every male character in this book came across to me as blandly forgettable, indistinguishable from one another.

4 out of 10