#Review - The Last Song of Penelope by Claire North

The Last Song of Penelope (The Songs of Penelope, 3)

Claire North
Orbit, 20 June 2024
Available as: HB, 388pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356516110

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Last Song of Penelope to consider for review.

The stories of Penelope and of Odysseus her husband, who was ten years away from Ithaca at the Trojan War and ten years returning, are part of the DNA of Western culture and I can remember when I first heard then, in a (necessarily bowdlerised!) version when I was about eight years old. 

Even then, I thought, this was rather odd. 

It wasn't so much the somewhat random escapades of Odysseus as he made his leisurely way home (though he could have hurried up a bit couldn't he?) but the way Penelope was treated as she waited for him. Why didn't someone just chase those suitors away? Why did Penelope have to stage an elaborate ruse, weaving her father-in-law's shroud just to delay them? Of course, nobody was going to teach the kids in an English rural primary school in the 70s about sexism and the patriarchy - and I'd never really gone back and revisited the stories until Claire North's trilogy began to appear - so long-buried questions and puzzlement bubbled up as soon as I began reading these books. I have been intrigued and captivated by the way that North deals with them. By the cool affect of her narration, the way she integrates human affairs with the Greek pantheon, the puzzled outsider's view of Egyptian Kenamon. But most of all, by the often-exasperated Penelope - a woman on the edge in more ways than one - as she deals with indignity after indignity and triumphs every time.

Last Song is the third (and last) book, and if you haven't read the others (Ithaca and House of Odysseus) you simply must go back and do so before you start this one. Not because spoilers (this is a three thousand year old story!) but because you have such a reading treat in store. You mustn't miss out. So promise me you'll do that, please?

Assuming you have, you'll be a bit more clued up with the setting. In her husband's prolonged absence, Penelope is Queen of Ithaca, a remote and much-maligned corner of the Ancient Greek world, a modest place and one which tends, shrewdly, to exaggerate its modesty. With so many ravening kings, pirates, psychotic gods and such loose on the wine-dark sea, the less tempting a kingdom appears, the safer it will be.

The general set-up is that Penelope, a wise and determined woman, mustn't be seen to exercise ;power, so this is left to her somewhat bumbling counsellors. In reality she is, though, firmly in control and is playing a long game, keeping the suitors, who wish to marry her (and inherit the kingdom) at arm's length while also preserving Ithaca's independence from its stronger neighbours. 

In the earlier books we saw Penelope skilfully navigate various crises, cultivating allies and bamboozling various would-be enemies. In The Last Song, though, she faces her stiffest challenge when Odysseus, finally, returns, upsetting careful calculations and overturning the delicate balance that Penelope has maintained. Soon Ithaca will be at war with itself for reasons utterly predictable to anyone who's been watching the absurd, strutting men who inhabit these tales. 

All of that is complicated by our narrator, the goddess Athena, who, as she informs us, is far from reliable. Indeed, she admits that she has a certain purpose in shaping events, and she will, obviously, adhere to a certain view of how things develop. While it might be nice if this involved female solidarity with Penelope and her lieutenants and maids, that will only go so far. Athena is in the business of writing her story, and she will have an eye to the audience down the ages who will receive it. 

So, as events unfold, we're getting two narratives (at least). There is what - we may imagine - "really" went on (but which we're not told all of) and what the "poets" will sing of in future days. Sometimes these align, more often not. I would venture to say though that the former is what eight year old me would like to have been told. By giving us this, North therefore corrects the record, though, as Athena warns us, there can be no reliability when one goes beyond the words of poets...

But what a story this is. There is war here, both force of arms and force of cunning. There is pride, rage, revenge. There is greed. Above all - or at the centre of all - there is love, or loves. Love that might have been, love that has been worn down and lost but might be regrown. The relationship between Penelope and the returned Odysseus is knotted and complex, he revealed to be, perhaps, less the pig headed patriarch than some of his peers. But equally complex is Penelope's relationship with her son Telemachus - though it is rather one to which she has lost, and can't seem to find, the key.

There is also bitterness and cruelty here with some moments of real horror - The Last Song of Penelope is not a book for the faint of heart. Long-suffering as she is, Penelope is not spotless herself - for example, even she does not really, I think, see her maids, who are slaves, as people, however much she clearly loves them. So we are trapped by layers of assumptions and social norms.

The Last Song of Penelope is a brilliant, satisfying, heart-wrenching and absorbing conclusion to North's trilogy. The writing shows North at her formidable best, but more, it takes these ancient stories and imbues them with a sense of heart, a deep empathy for people of long ago, who are living half in myth, half in history. I think it's that heart, that empathy which is perhaps what is missing from so many modern retellings, eroded by the act of translation and the familiarity of the story. North gifts her version with both. 

I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND this book!

For more information about The Last Song of Penelope, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Ithaca by Claire North

Ithaca

Claire North

Orbit, 8 September 2022

Available as: HB, 400pp, e, audio

Source: Advance e copy

ISBN(HB): 9780356516042

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of Ithaca to consider for review.

Ithaca is a story of Queen Penelope, waiting at home while her husband Odysseus gallivants his slow way home after the Trojan War. 

I have tended to be wary of Greek myth retellings, and I'm not sure why. Something about having read these stories in school perhaps, but also about Greek mythology being almost too rich a serving of the incredible, just one bizarre thing after another, coupled with petulant deities? 

But Claire North is one of my absolute top favourite authors. Across novel after novel, she's served up the bizarre in the normal, making astonishing themes seem part of everyday life, and making ordinary people, extraordinary. So if anyone can be trusted to do something magical with this material, it's North - and I just had to look at what she'd do.

In outline, this is a fairly well-known story. Seventeen years ago, Odysseus took all the fighting men of the island with him, and of course the gold, so Penelope, and Ithaca, are unprotected and - with doubts spreading about whether he will ever return - she is subject to the attentions of a pack of suitors. With some help from the gods, Penelope outwits them. So much, I vaguely remembered. Bands of ravening pirates however also threaten Ithaca (an addition by North I think) and the old men and boys left behind by Odysseus are wholly incapable of seeing them off. What's a queen to do?

Which is where North makes this story her own. She fills this world - poised uneasily between myth and history - with real people (even when some of them are gods). And she intelligently and compellingly supplies a rationale, a world, a motivation for what happens here. For Penelope's plight. For the whole, appalling enterprise of the Trojan War. For the business with the suitors.

That motivation is, of course, the patriarchal system that underpins everything, a system reflected in the lives both of mortals like Penelope and of the gods themselves. The story is narrated by Hera, Queen of the Gods and also wife of Zeus - and she is VERY careful not to draw his attention to what she's encouraging on distant little Ithaca, because it would be seen as rebellion against the male power that's dethroned her as the primordial goddess of fire. 

Similarly, Penelope, left a very tricky hand to play while Odysseus is off strutting his heroic stuff, has to weave together an ever shifting web of alliances, expedients, trusted allies, manipulated guests, commerce and - as we eventually see - clandestine military operations to keep herself and her son alive, her island at peace and a place ready for returning Odysseus. And she has to do it all without seeming to claim a place in the Royal council, without actually giving advice to any man, and indeed, in spite of the very clumsy attempts by the men - who think they're in charge - to direct things.

The world in which this all takes place is gradually revealed to be a nasty and brutish place, especially for women, seen here being sold into slavery, casually disposed of by their master or mistress, taken as prizes in war (the whole focus of the Trojan war, of course) and casually assaulted by the men around them. Again, the behaviour of men and gods is not so different. 

This side of things was not, of course, included in the version of these stories I was told as a child at school - which possibly did make them even harder to understand, with motivations and consequences cloaked. In North's retelling, Hera's rather wearied, very arch and thoroughly modern commentary and narrative ably fill these gaps, restoring the story to a wholeness and putting the deeds of women (which, we are assured, the Poets will never sing) back in their rightful place. We see Penelope's dealings with her household, her maids, assorted priestesses (and the frankly bonkers royal couple Elektra and Orestes who arrive from Mycenae mid-book on a mission of revenge, upsetting all her careful calculations).

The story is a delight throughout, very much reflecting North's witty, cool authorial style, but dialled up to eleven and served with an extra relish that completely suits the perspective of the REAL GODDESS that Hera would have us remember she is. 

In short, Ithaca is a twisty, complex story fraught with the possibility of lines being crossed - of attracting the unwanted attention of Zeus, or the piracy getting out of hand, or the suitors finally demanding a response - and one carefully located in a world of almost-history, almost myth. This is Greece, but before it put on all its airs and graces.  Half the characters are apparently descended from demigods, under curses or being protected by deities (sometimes all three). No-one yet has any use for writing or for accounting - those strange, near-Eastern technologies - and there is a palpable sense that Greece is not yet the equal of, say, Egypt in the civilisation stakes. Nevertheless, there is also a sense of nascent history, with the seeds of the Greece-that-is-to-be visible in city rivalries, trade routes and an emerging politics. Possibilities seem to fill the air, Penelope's very human sense of guile and skill at managing the rather lumbering gods-in-a-machine pointing the way to the future. 

It's a powerful, bewitching and above all, fun story, one I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about Ithaca, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

Treacle Walker
Alan Garner
4th Estate, 28 October 2021
Available as: HB, 160pp, PB, e, audio
Source: Purchased HB 
ISBN(HB): 9780008477790

In Treacle Walker, Garner shows that an absorbing fantasy doesn't have to be wordy or indeed, lengthy. His short book contains such a concentrated essence of experience that reading it is like playing with one of Philip Pullman's alethiometers - every moment revealing deeper and yet deeper layers of meaning, all coexisting on the same pages.

At one level this is a simple story of a lonely boy, Joe, and his friendship with the rag-and-bone man, Treacle Walker. Joe seems to be alone - his parents never appear and nor do any other adults, except in one scene when he is having an eye examination. (Joe has a "lazy" eye which apparently requires his "good" one to be covered up so that the other will recover. This gives him different views on the world, which as the story develops, will become important). At another level there are mythic themes here, with a bog-body appearing (a bog-body with decided views about Walker). And Treacle Walker's "donkey stones", used to clean the doorstep, carry that image of the White Horse from the cover. Ideas of sacrifice, of recurring cycles through time and of a deep connection with the landscape are explored, as in much of Garner's fiction. And at another level altogether there are part humorous, part sinister threats as words and picture begin to come alive in the text of a child's comic, and in hints here and there of deeper symbolism (as in the bargain and exchange between the two main characters at the start of the book).

It would be wrong I think to try to pick out any one of these "levels" as "the" answer. In this, Treacle Walker feels to me like a distillation of Garner's many books - is like the book that would result if The Weirdstone of Brisingamen AND The Moon of Gomrath AND Boneland were all written down at the same time on the same pages. But it's more than that, it is Garner at his best, exploring some strange region between here and there and bringing it back to us as we sit in the firelight - perhaps beneath a massive fireplace, in an ancient house between a river and a meadow and railway line (triples matter here). 

It's a book that rewards a second and third read. There are little puzzles here which fall into place, circularities and co-occurences about the identities of Joe and of Treacle and about their roles - both outsiders, in a vaguely defined place and time which I think doesn't so much date to a particular year or decade as to the time of childhood, which seems here an incredibly precious time, seen through Joe's eyes without the distortions of adult relationships or concerns (apart from Walker's, and that's different).

All in all, a rare and enchanting book (in the truest sense). I'm sure I haven't completely understood it, but I will be back for more!

For more information about Treacle walker, see the publisher's website here.
 

#Blogtour #Review - Sistersong by Lucy Holland

Sistersong
Lucy Holland
Macmillan, 28 April 2022
Available as: PB, 416pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy provided by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9781529039054

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Sistersong and to Jamie and Stephen at Black Crow for inviting me to take part in the book's blogtour.

Sistersong is a generously imagined and well told story rooted in the sub-Roman period, when Britain was no longer defended by the Empire but "England" had not yet formed. It's a story of family, love, revenge and treachery but above all I think a story of becoming what one is - and the costs doing that can accrue. 

This period of this book is sometime described as the "dark ages" -  a term originally used because of the lack of contemporary written records, but which is now avoided because to many it suggests that it was barbarism and decay, which (as this book shows) it was not. It's also sometimes seen the "age of Arthur", a British leader defending his people against the invading Saxons. Again, though, the historical records are scant. This gives an author a great deal of room and Holland takes full advantage, placing this story in a definable place - the kingdom of Dumnonia, in what is now South West England - and associating it with real people (her King, Cador, his successor Constantine, and their Saxon opponents). To these she adds a conflict between the old religion of Celtic paganism and the new Christianity represented by the priest Gildas - also a real person, who wrote one of the few contemporary histories of Britain. (I loved the way that Gildas's actual habit of denouncing pretty much everybody in his writings carries through to acrimonious relationships with nearly everyone here.) 

The main focus of Sistersong is though not on the historical characters but on the fictional Riva, Keyne and Sinne. Cador's three children are vividly portrayed and only too plausible. The story is told from their viewpoints, Holland switching between them - shifts which sometimes preserve the flow of events, sometimes deliberately jar them, but which always illuminate, showing an event from two or even three perspectives as well as giving the reader a fuller picture than any of the characters have.

Of the three, Riva and Sinne are the "twa sisters" of the traditional murder ballad which, as as Holland has explained, was the inspiration for the book: Keyne is the one the ballad left out, for reasons which become clear. It's the relationships between them which really drive the story, each wanting something different. 

One seeks love and adventure. 

Another, injured and (as she sees it) disfigured in a fire as a child, retreats into books and her magical talent for healing, but deep inside, may yearn for other things. 

The third would lead, but is in a society where that seems unlikely, and fears that society seems likely to impose.

The ups and downs of their relationships both affect and illuminate the wider political events - war, invasion, religious conflict and the loss of magic - which will determine the future of Dumnonia and, later, of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which will become England. 

I loved the way that in this book, Holland foregrounds the struggles of the three relatable (if at times frustrating) young people who are doing their "growing ups" just as the tides of history lap the walls of their hill-fort.  Both sides of the story are urgent, and nobody really understands what is going on. It may be tempting to assume that we, privileged 21st century readers, know how things turned out eventually and so understand everything. But no. This is such an unknown period, and Holland so cleverly brings in different factors (I don't want to do spoilers!) that nothing is certain - except love, change, and loss. Family love and romantic love. Personal loss as childhood familiarity gives way to new battle lines: wider loss as the old ways are challenged and change. (But not without a fight!)

I just loved Sistersong, which portrays a complex historical situation without painting heroes and villains (if there were a villain in this book, it might be Gildas who perhaps appears at times as slightly monomaniacal - though once the full truth about him is made known, the reader may revise this point of view). There are nods to what people will recall of the Arthurian stories (especially with one character) but this isn't an attempt to "retell" those - Holland instead creates a world here with echoes in history and in other sources, but which is fully her own.

Overall, a compelling story filled with magic, romance,  and adventure and with many contemporary resonances.

For more information about Sistersong, see the publisher's website here. You can buy Sistersong from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop, from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.