In the follow up to his Sunday Times bestseller, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben compares tree planting to battery farming My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Graystone Books for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. A highlight of the genre and a must-read for those who enjoy mythology and retellings.How Ancient Forests Can Save Us If We Let ThemĪvailable: 2 nd May 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook This has lead to a well-rounded, tense and perfectly paced story with nuance–and an ending that is surprising even to those who know what to expect. It is clear that Constanza Casati has done her research, drawing on a range of sources outside of the most obvious Homer.
And it is brilliant to see her be given this space, a full novel, over 450 pages, to be herself, to bloom and show all the facets of her personality. Clytemnestra is fierce and intelligent, loving and ferocious. I’ve always found her to be an incredibly interesting figure, far more so than Helen, whose main quality is her beauty. She experiences great personal tragedy at various points in her life–as those of you who are familiar with Greek mythology will be aware of–and uses it to grow stronger, to shape herself into a figure of authority. Clytemnestra is a woman ambitious and driven, determined to carve out power for herself in a world stacked against her. The key theme to mention here is feminine rage. Both Jennifer Saint’s Elektra and Claire Heywood’s The Daughters of Sparta, where Clytemnestra takes up a large role, ultimately cover a far larger chunk of story, and while excellent books in their own right, end up less character-driven. This is the latest in a series of books about her and her more famous sister, Helen–but the one that stands out to me as both the most appealing to a grimdark audience and the one with the clearest focus. It tells the familiar story from the perspective of the women who lived it–with a clear focus on agency and Clytemnestra’s role in Mycenae. Told in burst from a range of key moments in Clytemnestra’s life, this account is concerned with establishing her as a strong woman, ruler and leader in her own right. Even knowing how the story goes, I felt there was never a dull moment in this, and that is really down to the strength of Constanza Casati’s haunting writing and her brilliant focus on characterisation. Taking the oft-overlooked Spartan sister and telling her story in bursts from childhood to the aftermath of Agamemnon’s famous death, this manages to create a version of Clytemnestra who is both utterly real and adds something new to the canon. Constanza Casati’s debut Clytemnestra is a worthy addition to the shelf of Greek mythology-inspired retellings.
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