A beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking perspective of a mother who grapples with a terrifying realization. I happened to read this book right after I read about US fruit companies using pesticides on fields in South America known to cause cancer and birth defects, which made the connections to this story feel all the more horrific and infuriating. Love this book.

We know about the 10 years of fighting at Troy and the 10 more years it took for Odysseus to find his way home again, all while his faithful queen Penelope patiently fended off suitors and kept the kingdom functioning the whole time. Ithaca gives us an intimate look at what some of that time might have looked like. Set 18 years after the men of Ithaca sailed to Troy, we find a compelling portrait of the lives of the women left behind and the young men raised in a world without fathers.

I enjoyed so much about this retelling. With an irreverent, jaded Hera as our omniscient narrator, the story gives us a bird's eye view into the lives of the women of Ithaca, particularly the life of Penelope, who we all knew was more clever and cunning than Odysseus all along. Claire North's smooth and elegant prose paints a vivid picture of the state of Ithaca and the high stakes Penelope had to contend with. Penelope, who was just a young woman and new mother at the time the Trojan War started, has had to learn how to be a queen. We see not just a dutiful wife and loving mother but also a shrewd leader trying to maintain a very precarious peace while also seeing to matters of commerce and defense. The story is fairly evenly paced to begin with, but we get a side plot that injects some excitement when her cousin Clytemnestra's messy domestic drama brings trouble to Penelope's shores.

This is definitely one of the better Greek mythology retellings out there. The writing is evocative and really gives you a good picture of what things are like at ground level in Ithaca. The character of Penelope is developed beautifully, and there are some really compelling minor characters in this story as well, although at times I felt a little frustrated by all the women always seemingly keeping each other at arm's length. It isn't until late in the book that we really see much solid female camaraderie. But overall, I would recommend this one for fans of The Odyssey and also fans of empowered women in fiction in general.