Indeed, one of the novel’s greatest strengths is the extent to which it grounds the happenings of ancient myth in the material reality of that world. Heywood quickly immerses us in the dangerous, bloody world of ancient Greece. Neither of them, however, find much happiness. Though they are both born into wealth and prestige, they soon take very different live paths. Klytemnestra, though originally the heir to her father’s throne, is instead married to Agamemnon, newly-crowned king of Mycenae. In just the last decade alone we’ve had numerous reinterpretations of that pivotal conflict of ancient myth, ranging from Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles to Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (and its sequel The Women of Troy ) to Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships and, most recently, Claire Heywood’s Daughters of Sparta.Īs its title implies, Heywood’s book focuses on two daughters of the Spartan monarchs, Helen and Klytemnestra. I’m always up for a juicy retelling of classical myth, and this seems to be something of a golden age for the genre, with the Trojan War occupying pride of place.
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