(91) Ariadne, Jennifer Saint [bk 9 of 10 for May]

Wow, I did NOT know this story.

I started this book back in January, but only got a chapter in, and it didn’t grab me. Restarted it over the weekend, as the only remaining assigned for the month are this and a volume of poetry that I’m lingering over, and ended up reading it nearly all in one long gulp. I knew she had a ball of string, I knew her connection to the minotaur (kept trying to align this story with what I remembered from Madeline Miller’s Circe…. it didn’t completely jive because Pasiphea is malicious in Miller and pathetic in Saint.

But regardless, I had no idea what was going to happen next, once the minataur was dead and she leaves Crete with Theseus. And so so much happens.

Enjoyed this immensely, always seem to end up liking these retellings. Partly because the feminist retellings just appeal to me, partly because I always feel a little uneducated about classic literature (not a priority now, but so much of what I read is 19th century, and understanding the Greeks and the Romans is just what education IS), and… I don’t know what the other part is. Probably back to the feminist retellings, decentering masculine narratives of war and acknowledging the narrative potential of the domestic.