To be published 28/04/2022…
Elektra: bought up in the shadow of the Trojan War, a war which is destined to leave her parentless and alone and filled with a simmering vengeance. Clytemnestra: a sister, a wife, a mother, but when grief overcomes her she will lose them all. Cassandra: she only ever wanted to serve Apollo, but when he asks for more than she can give it will destroy her and render her powerless as the world goes up in flames. The lives of these tragic woman give us a damning insight into the less explored impacts of the Trojan war and shows us just how far reaching its consequences were.
The three narrative viewpoints of this novel took me a while to adjust to, but when I did it was obvious how powerful this split perspective was. Three very different women, whose lives Agamemnon has touched and influenced with varying degrees of tragedy. The contrast between Clytemnestra and her daughter Elektra is particularly striking as they view the same events through very different lenses. Yet you can understand both their points of view and how their experiences have led them there. It is impossible to play favourites and to know who is right; perhaps they both are, in their own ways, or perhaps neither of them are and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
I liked that the timeline of this narrative began before the Trojan War and ended long after. This makes it stand out from the other Trojan War retellings by putting the war itself into the background rather than making it into the main event. In fact Cassandra is the only one of the women who sees anything of the war and even her interactions with it are limited. The one war scene which stays with me from this book is Cassandra’s dealings with the legendary Trojan horse. However, it is not the soldiers and the tragedy which stand out in this scene, but rather the sense of powerlessness that Cassandra feels. Despite her special circumstance, to me this still reads as a reflection of the powerlessness of all women. This theme is repeated throughout the novel; even when Clytemnestra seizes power she is still left powerless in the end.
Escape to the Bookshelf 