sometimes it feels as if my hearts only purpose is to beat for greek mythology and this book is a gift, straight from zeus himself, to give me life. this retelling of the trojan war, including the actions that lead up to it and the consequences that followed, is quite refreshing. whilst classic myths tell about the glory and conquests of men, this focuses on the often overlooked presence of women. elegantly written from the narration of calliope, the goddess of epic poetry, the reader is given a...

meh. just because a novel is written about women and/or from the perspective of women doesn't automatically make it feminist, y'all.A Thousand Ships, despite its great premise (the story of the Trojan War told from the POVs of the women) - doesn't offer anything new and I do not understand the hype surrounding it at all. There have been other (better written) retellings of the Trojan War by women and about women long before this one.There are probably a dozen different women telling a part of th...

Shortlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction Women who survive (or don’t survive) a war are equally as heroic as their menfolk. (p. 344).A Thousand Ships is a retelling of the Trojan War from the women’s point of view. Natalie Haynes draws upon the Homeric epics and the plays of 5th century Athens as her sources. The book begins powerfully with war’s end and the destruction of Troy. Haynes paints a vivid picture of the fear and despair of the Trojan women as they begin to face their future...

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another. - the opening of The Iliad by Homer------------------------------------ I’m not sure I could have made it more obvious, but he hasn’t

I find it extraordinary that a classicist can claim that the women from the Trojan cycle are 'forgotten, ignored... hidden'. As if all those Athenian plays built around the figures and words of the women in these stories never existed: Euripides' The Trojan Women, Hecuba, Andromache; Aeschylus' Clytemnestra; Ovid's Heroides which rewrites epic from the points of view of women such as Penelope, Helen and Laodamia, even Ovid's Metamorphoses which gives us a subversive Calliope alongside the other

“… this is the women’s war, just as much as it is the men’s, and the poet will look upon their pain – the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men – and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn.”I love the concept of this novel, giving voice to the women of the Trojan War, a whole lot more than I enjoyed the actual experience of reading it. I think the author did...

I feel I would have enjoyed this book more if I knew less of the source material. Now a lot of the short chapters feel more like a retelling or even an infodump than truly a stand alone story with fully realized characters Survivors, victims, perpetrators: these roles are not always separate. People can be wounded and wounding at the same time, or at different times in the same life.A Thousand Ships starts of with poetic visions of what razing a city means, fires so bright that people and birds

“She isn’t a footnote, she’s a person. And she - all the Trojan women - should be memorialised as much as any other person.” I enjoy anything relating to Greek mythology, it’s my jam. This book in particular grabbed my interest because it gives voice to the women during the Trojan War rather than the usual characters (Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon etc.) and granted, these men are obviously included. They cannot be ignored when recounting the Trojan War, but so too should the women be included.

I love, love, love this book!!!Author Natalie Haynes, who narrates her novel with passion, wit and angst, was inspired by stories of the various goddesses, warriors, wives, mothers and daughters of the Trojan War, and has masterfully woven their tales into an epic of and for women!I was especially enamored with the stories of:1. Penelope (wife of Odysseus) - her "sharp-tongued" letters to her wayward husband just dripped with sarcasm! I was very attentive whenever her sections came up!2. Hecuba

"There are so many ways of telling a war: the entire conflict can be encapsulated in just one incident. One man's anger at the behaviour of another, say. A whole war - all 10 years of it - might be distilled into that. But this is the women's war, just as much as it is the men's, and the poet will look upon their pain - the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men - and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at

Q:When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else. And victory had made the Greeks no kinder. (c)Q:She could see her own future as clearly as she saw everything else. Its brevity was her one consolation. (c)Q:She remembered the warring sensations when her father introduced them: immediate devotion mingled with a desperate presentiment of grief. (c)Q:Unable to bear the conversation of her parents or friends or servants, she found herself repeating the looped wal...

This is admittedly not the genre or type of book I would typically choose. It was the choice for my book club this month, and I have made a commitment to expand my horizons and read everything, and I'm very glad I did.At first, the non-linear storytelling is difficult to grasp. The story of the Trojan War is told from the perspectives of many different women from many different timelines. I got frustrated with trying to follow, but I remembered my commitment and soldiered on. At about page 190,

Looks like female-orientated classical retellings are continuing into 2019 and you will not see me arguing with this delightful trend at allllll

UPDATE: MY SISTER GAVE ME A COPY. I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING.I feel like I keep looking for that perfect Greek literary novel that will fill the Madeline Miller shaped hole in my life. Given that this is blurbed by the queen herself, I have high hopes.

Round two. I read Natalie Haynes’ book retelling the Oedipus myth a couple of years ago, and for various reasons I didn’t enjoy it (mainly, deviating so far from the myth that I didn’t think it even qualified as Oedipus any more, and making the civil war between the two princes into an overly childish shouting match). But I’ve often said that I’m reluctant to blacklist an author on the basis of one bad book – maybe they just had a dip, or that one book didn’t gel with me. Two books, however, and...

Longlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction.4.5 Stars.This is another retelling of the Trojan War. The novel covers events which happened before and during Homer’s two epic poems, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. However, with this retelling we have something which has not been done before. The story is told from the female characters perspective. Be they mortals, queens, or gods, all the characters are female, with the male characters taking a back seat.The story begins with the sacking of Tro...

"When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else."The reviews for this one are such a mixed bag that while I was consumed with curiosity about the subject, I was also feeling some trepidation picking it up: nothing sucks quite the way a book you wanted to love turning out bad sucks. I was both pleased and relieved that it turned out to be a smooth and satisfying read.After the end of the Trojan War, the women (and nymphs and goddesses) who were involved in this...

I have sung of death and of life, of joy and of pain.I have sung of life after death.And I have sung of the women, the women in the shadows. I have sung of the forgotten, the ignored, the untold. I have picked up the old stories and I have shaken them until the hidden women appear in plain sight. I have celebrated them in song because they have waited long enough. Just as I promised him: this was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them. A war does not ignore half