troisoiseaux

Read Country by Michael Hughes, a more or less beat-by-beat retelling of the Iliad set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles— the Greeks are IRA, the Trojans are British soldiers; Helen (Nellie) was turned as an informant for the British and finagled herself a new life in London out of it, under the not entirely untrue story that she'd run off with a British soldier; the gods are politicians from London and Dublin making back-channel deals and local ones who can be tapped for a favor. God, this was brilliant. This is what retellings are for: a cultural translation with something interesting to say about both the source material and the new context; the oh, that's clever of recognizing how stuff has been "translated", especially when it takes a chapter or two for the significance of a certain detail to click. (I did have the Wikipedia synopsis of the Iliad open for reference the entire time.)

Just started listening to Frank Herbert's Dune as a full-cast audiobook, which I'm coming to pretty much blind – I haven't seen the movies, and to the extent I have learned anything through cultural osmosis, it's that Paul is Space Jesus and it's a metaphor for the fight over oil in the Middle East...? – but liking it so far. Kind of wild to read for the first time in 2025, among all the articles about everyone outsourcing their brains to ChatGPT: "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free, but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." Like, oh, this is the Torment Nexus from sci-fi classic Don't Build the Torment Nexus.

Read The Last Song of Penelope by Claire North, the third and final installment of her Penelope-centric retelling of the Odyssey (+ Oresteia crossover). This trilogy is so, so good, and considering I'm kind of a snob about the Feminist Greek Mythology Retelling Industrial Complex, that's saying something. I think what really makes North's books click for me is that a. she colors outside of the lines, as it were - inventing new characters and storylines wholesale - and b. each book is narrated by a different goddess (Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena, respectively) in a way that casts interesting light on the mortal characters and Olympians alike.

The end of the Odyssey is, of course, a hell of a thing. Given the way that the story unfolded over the first two books— painting Penelope's maids as individuals, loyal and clever and brave and indispensable as her eyes and ears around the palace; the invention of a sympathetic Egyptian suitor who becomes Penelope's trusted ally and woulda-coulda-shoulda-been love interest; Penelope's subtle, scrappy reign as spymaster-strategist-queen— I read the first third of the book with a sense of dread because Odysseus' return was going to ruin everything. It would have been too easy, with the story North had been telling so far, to make Odysseus an outright villain, and I'm glad that she went a much more interesting, nuanced route. (Telemachus, on the other hand. What a little prick.)

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Anyway, 10/10, this book was great and I'm so relieved this trilogy stuck the landing. (I didn't doubt that it would, exactly, but I was biting my nails for a minute.)

It turns out that Claire North's Ithaca was not a stand-alone, as I'd assumed, but the first book in a trilogy retelling both the Odyssey and the Oresteia! In House of Odysseus, she once again knocks it out of the park with a genuinely creative, compelling reimagining: after Penelope agrees to harbor a Furies-haunted, apparently mad Orestes, Menelaus rolls up with an army of Spartans (and Helen in tow) and takes over with a smile and a how thoughtless of me, to have left my brother-in-arms' wife to fend for herself for so long! Add to this two mysteries (a murder at the palace; the apparent poisoning of Orestes), the handful of original characters introduced in the first book, and the goddesses of Olympus as interested parties— but it's a tightly-woven story, even with all of these moving parts. North is very, very good at telling you a lot about a character— even (or especially?) minor ones— in a sentence or two, and I love her Elektra so, so much: a deeply broken, angry girl holding the pieces of herself together with sheer spite.

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Read The King Must Die by Mary Renault, the first book in a duology retelling the myth of the Greek hero Theseus; this one covers the story up through his return to Athens after slaying the Minotaur. I enjoyed it! It had the feel of a fantasy adventure novel, although it was less fantastic than the original myth— ( basically, the Minotaur is a metaphor? ) There was a certain amount of *waves at Mary Renault*-ness, but for long stretches of the book, I honestly forgot that she was the author; the climax features one of the best action scenes I can remember reading.

Read Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O'Reilly, a heartfelt and laugh-out-loud funny memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland as the ninth of eleven (!) children, raised by a single father after his mother's death when he was five. Best family memoir I've read since Patricia Lockwood's Priestdaddy.

I've decided that my reading goal for 2023 is to re-read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, which is probably my all-time favorite book and certainly the most influential; I genuinely don't know who I'd be if I hadn't read this book when I was 13. Having started on January 1st, I'm still on the introduction to Bishop Myriel. Three sentences into Les Mis, Hugo warns that the subsequent multiple chapters dedicated to Myriel "in no way concerns our story," and I feel like people tend to believe him, so I find myself newly struck by the significance of starting his book about the myriad cruelties of society with a portrait of one man living a life of almost ineffable kindness. It also occurs to me that Hugo uses gardening as a shorthand for goodness— off the top of my head, I can think of Myriel, Valjean as a gardener at the convent, and Mabeuf?

Odysseus, Delayed by Nathan McClain [x]

You stand in front of the airport window, watching
the planes arrive, or leave. Or you watch the sky, dark now,
smog where—weren't there stars here before? Wait long enough

and you'll find yourself alone with this evening—though beautiful
women pass with their sons, boys like your own who you may never
see again. Listen. A name's called again, over the intercom.

He has kept everyone waiting; whoever he is—still not responding.

Having been recently introduced to the Mechanisms via High Noon Over Camelot, I listened to their cyberpunk noir Greek mythology retelling, Ulysses Dies at Dawn, which is just, A+! 10/10! I enjoyed this so much!! I liked the songs better (or at least more consistently) than in High Noon Over Camelot, and I loved how it played with the myths, especially its focus on "hero"/human/demigod characters - Odysseus/Ulysses, obviously, but also Oedipus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Ariadne (who in this story are, I kid you not, a heist team) - rather than the gods. More than once, I laughed out loud at how cleverly a myth had been referenced or reimagined.

There are some stories— or, sources of stories, I guess?— that I've loved in every iteration I've encountered since I was a child; you will be unsurprised to learn that Greek mythology is one of them. (Sherlock Holmes is another one.) Tumblr's mid-2010s "Greek mythology/Dante's Inferno/etc. was fanfiction!" phase was pretty cringe, but I think there's a nugget of truth in there about the appeal of, like, "touchstone" stories and characters, which can be - and have been - retold over and over, in different settings or situations or with different motivations ascribed to them. I think it lends itself especially well to a compact, genre-shuffling reimagining like this?? The individual songs, and narrative sections, color in the album's cyberpunk- and noir-flavored and story-specific details, but the characters' backstories are already broadly sketched out by, well, thousands of years of existing as stories, so it can really hit the ground running. (There is also some Official short fiction further exploring the world and characters— Orpheus seems to be a favorite of whoever wrote it.)

I feel like if you made a spectrum which somehow started at Repo! the Genetic Opera and ended with Ghost Quartet, this album would be in the middle? The overall vibes (and some of the songs) remind me more of the former, while the structure (and other songs) reminds me more of the later.

I saw Hadestown last night, and OHHHHH MYYYYY GODDDD?????? Incredible, amazing, spectacular. Literally— it's been at least six years since I've seen a musical, and I had forgotten what a spectacle they are. The choreography! The lighting! The music!

I went back and forth on whether to listen to the Broadway album of Hadestown before seeing the show— I've loved Anais Mitchell's concept album since before it was cool for years, but (or rather, for that reason?) I've never listened to the Original Broadway Cast Recording— and ultimately I'm really glad that I didn't, because it was such a wonderful experience to watch it play out with fresh eyes (and ears) while mentally cheering in anticipation whenever I recognized the opening notes of one of Mitchell's original songs, like at a concert when the band breaks out their fan favorites. It was interesting to come to this show with the version of the story that's existed in my head for so long; it develops Orpheus and Eurydice, and Hades and Persephone, as characters with backstories and motivations, and adds layers to the plot.

This will definitely seem odd to say about a musical I'm actively enthusing over, but I found the actual songs kind of a mixed bag— besides "Chant" and "Chant (Reprise)", the new material didn't really stick in my head, and I found some of the lyric changes kind of a downgrade. (e.g., But even that hardest of hearts unhardened / Suddenly, when he saw her there was changed to But he fell in love with a beautiful lady / Who walked up above— why???) And, like— in terms of both voice and performance, Eva Noblezada (Eurydice) and Jewelle Blackman (Persephone) were incredible, but ( I'm going to be kind of mean about someone else behind the cut. )

What I found so spectacular about this show was the overall production— the way the music and acting and choreography and lighting came together to tell a story, and Be An Experience. I could see a family resemblance to The Great Comet, also directed by Rachel Chavkin— unlike The Great Comet, there weren't audience members seated on the stage, but the band was, and they played an acknowledged role in the show itself. There was a rotating stage - as used in, say, Les Mis and Hamilton - but it was actually made up of three rings: two that rotated, and a platform in the center that could sink beneath the stage or rise up as needed. One song ("Wait for Me") did a very very cool thing with swinging lights that was so beautiful, it's going to live rent-free in my head for a while.

I can't remember the last time I was so emotionally wrecked by such an inevitable tragic ending. D. teased me afterwards for gasping out loud when Orpheus and Eurydice's attempt to leave the underworld ended as all retellings of Orpheus and Eurydice must, especially since I'd already been crying for about five minutes, but the devastating magic of this show is that even as you know they won't make it, you can believe for at least a moment that they will. (Also: the implied time loop????)

Finished Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig, which was just, hoo boy. Set in the months leading up to WWI, a 20-something Austro-Hungarian calvary officer, Anton Hofmiller, sticks his foot in his mouth at a party by asking his host's physically disabled daughter to dance, which he responds to in an understandably embarrassed but reasonable manner and learns a valuable lesson about— HA, no, I'm kidding, he massively overcompensates and sets off a chain of events that ends up ruining several lives.

( Musings )

Finished The Women of Troy by Pat Barker; a sequel to her Briseis-centric retelling of the Iliad, The Silence of the Girls, this one takes place between the fall of Troy and the Greeks' departure from its shores, where they remain trapped after their victory by the forces of nature and/or the displeasure of the gods. Briseis, now pregnant with Achilles' child and safely married to one of his companions, remains one of the POV characters, navigating her new, fragile, and obviously emotionally fraught privilege while doing her best to help the other captive Trojan women. The other POV characters are Calchas, a seer navigating the politics of the Greek camp, and Pyrrhus, who Barker does not absolve - if anything, she ( increases his bodycount ) - but explains, as a teenager struggling to fill the shoes of the legendary father he never knew.

I think I preferred the first novel generally, and have a couple of nits to pick with this one specifically, but it was, like, fine. Interesting to compare to Natalie Haynes' A Thousand Ships.

Read A Conspiracy of Kings, the fourth book in Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series. The narrator was initially at somewhat of a disadvantage by not being Costis, but I warmed up to him quickly. The theme of what one has to give up as an individual in order to be a king was surprisingly heart-wrenching. I loved the significance of when the narrative referred to characters by their royal names (Sounis, Attolis) vs. by their real ones— sometimes in the same exchange, as they let their masks slip and/or had to switch back into king mode.

Read Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin, about the character from Virgil's Aeneid, in the vein of Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad or Madeline Miller's Circe or Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls. It's the most meta example of this niche I've encountered, except maybe for Atwood's— Virgil appears to a teenaged Lavinia as something that's half a ghost, half T.H. White's time-wonky Merlin, while dying some hundred years in her future; Lavinia-as-narrator is aware of being Virgil's creation, but Le Guin breathes such life into her and such detail into her world that it's easy to forget.

Lying Odysseus replied, I will
tell you the truth completely.

That's it, that's the book! Review over!

No, but seriously: I actually really, really enjoyed the Odyssey. This came as a bit of a surprise, honestly? Even with all the good things I'd heard about Emily Wilson's translation, there was a small suspicious part of me that remembered the one time I tried to read the Iliad in high school (I gave up almost immediately) and worried I might find the non-prose format too tedious; and given that I've read a couple of feminist, or at least female-centric, retellings of the Odyssey (Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad, Madeline Miller's Circe) in the past year, I also wondered if I would be too annoyed by the source material's treatment of its female characters* to enjoy it. Neither of these things turned out to be problems!

I found Wilson's translation really easy to read, while still being clearly not modern prose— one of the reviews quoted in the 'why you should read this book' summary bit (a review by Madeline Miller, in fact) described her language as "fresh, unpretentious, and lean... effortlessly easy to read and ... rigorously considered," which, yeah, that just about covers it. Clearly modern words/turns of phrase - kebab, tote bag, hustling - feel organic when they do appear. I was also delighted by Wilson's decision to slip in a few puns: "mercurial Hermes"; "Demeter with cornrows in her hair."

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