Whilst I can see why some might like the writing, for me it kind of read like a textbook at times due to just how much information and different stories the author was trying to cover. This book claims to be female centered, however, the female characters are no more central than any other retelling. The girl was a powerful enchantress, like her aunt Circe; she knew how to find and mix herbs that bring sleep, madness and death; how to force rivers to run backwards, how to quench blazing fires, to make forests move. It was very interesting learning about some characters I’d heard of but didn’t know much about — I would say it’s incredibly useful to have everything neatly in one book, but because of that, it is a long read.

However, if we ignore all that, I did still really enjoy listening to this one on my back and forth work commutes. That is, it retells the myths without offering any new or refreshing points of view, while also doing it in the most chaotic way, oftentimes forgetting crucial plot details or explaining them in such backward way that they lose much of their original meaning. the classical myths are all entwined and so the stories have nice continuity, characters telling of their mother, aunts, and sisters. As cleverly as her protagonists (Athena, Alcithoë, Arachne, Andromache, Helen, Circe and Penelope) weave their tapestries, so she threads her stories. In Charlotte Higgins’s thrilling new interpretation of these ancient stories, their tales combine to form a dazzling, sweeping epic of storytelling.

It asks the reader to think about not only the female perspective on their stories, but their experience of living them. What's great about them is that the myths themselves are endlessly diverse and variable in detail, and that's what allows them to continue to bloom with fresh life and perspective long after they've been told.

What the Greeks really wanted, all along, was Troy's wealth They wanted the treasuries of her temples emptied out, her women lined up and shared out-soft bodies on which to vent their rage and greed.

uk will use the information you provide on this form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing. Higgins describes how, when Penelope must finally complete the shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes – a fabric with “a design as intricate as her own involved, withheld mind” – she folds it up and puts it away.