Elektra: No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller from the Author of ARIADNE

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I did however have a fair amount of difficulty, in the beginning, determining which character was speaking Cassandra or Electra. A major part of the narrative is shared between Elektra, Cassandra and Clytemnestra- each of whom gives us a brief picture of the significant events that impact their lives before, during and after the fall of Troy. The book evokes so many thoughts and emotions that I never could pin one thought down in regards to the characters. It might be different if, for instance, Saint had swapped Elektra for someone farther removed from Clytemnestra so that it felt like three women coming from three vastly different places rather than leaving Cassandra as such an outlier. CassandraPrincess of Troy, and cursed by Apollo to see the future but never to be believed when she speaks of it.

In Jennifer Saint's prose you can hear the songs of the poets, feel the floors beneath your feet, smell the wood burning in the fire and experience the story of these three very different women as if you are there. Patroklus’ death is presented as a major moment even though he is never mentioned before dying, and Achilles himself never actually appears in person. When I read Ariadne, the previous book by the author, I would grow frustrated with the main character for not taking more control over her own life.There is dramatic irony to it, as Elektra is reflecting on this the chapter after Cassandra commits suicide (well, successfully begs someone to kill her), but Elektra’s narrative weight, given to her by her equal pagetime to the others and her status as the titular character, makes it feel like the reader is supposed to care for and empathize with her. Elektra is her daughter by Agamemnon who, along with her brother Orestes, works to avenge their father by killing their mother.

I have always seen Clytemnestra as a victim, Agamemnon as a monster, and so this version of the story appealed to me. I felt there wasn’t enough new material built into the story, so it felt like a ‘telling’ rather than ‘retelling’ of a story I was already very familiar with.The writing flowed well, and there was no choppiness when Saint switched from one POV to another, though the most compelling chapters for me were the ones told by Clytemnestra. First, the positives: Saint's interpretation of Clytemnestra is, by far, the best modern interpreration to date (imo). Circetells the story of the witch that Odysseus meets on his journey home, so it is more Odyssey than Iliad, but it is still very much worth reading. The namesake of this book, Elektra, is the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra who kills her mother for murdering her father, she is of course helped by her brother.