House of Odysseus

North's novels are triumphs of conception and execution, and, until now, she has never covered the same ground twice. Ithaca (2022) brilliantly reimagined the Greek myth of Odysseus by approaching the story from the perspective of Penelope, Odysseus' wife, to explain her experience while her husband tried to make his way back home from the Trojan War. In this sequel, the fragile peace Penelope has established on the island of Ithaca is threatened when Elektra arrives with her broken and unstable brother, Orestes, king of Mycenae, shortly after he has murdered their mother, Clytemnestra. Penelope knows Orestes' uncle will follow him in a bid to seize the crown. War is brewing and North tells the tale via the machinations of its women. Her literary voice changes depending on the story, and her prose here is elegant, poetic, and gorgeously descriptive. (The book begins: "They came at sunset to my temple door, torches burning. The fire they carried was thin against the scarlet west and picked the bronze lines of their helmets out in gold.") This is a stunning novel.

North (Ithaca) veers between the snarky and the dramatic in her clumsy revisionist take on Greek mythology. Goddess Aphrodite narrates the intrigue on Ithaca, the island kingdom once ruled by Odysseus, who is still making his way back home after the Trojan War. His wife, Penelope, who's been trying to maintain order during his long absence, gets a new challenge after the arrival of Agamemnon's children, Orestes and Elektra. Orestes, the ruler of Mycenae, who'd avenged his father's death by killing his mother, is plagued by the Furies for his matricide, and Elektra seeks guidance from Penelope about the best way to prevent her brother's throne from being usurped. The saga also includes an investigation into a servant's murder, and a twist involving Helen of Troy. North attempts to make Aphrodite relatable by injecting her narration with modern usage, but too often gets mired in clunky prose ("Now I'm open-minded about basically everything in the realms of consensual bodily exploration, and I can see where Zeus was coming from, but even so, I doubt the execution of the act was half as exciting in reality as he thought it was going to be in his overactive imagination"). This falls short of other classical updates, including Jennifer Saint's Atalanta. (Aug.)