Ithaca

Penelope of Ithaca has been keeping court since her husband Odysseus went to war seventeen years ago and hasn’t returned. Every day is a struggle to keep up appearance and assure that no other man can take the thrown from her husband, whom most believe will never return. Penelope rules quietly, through the women of Ithaca that were left behind to keep the peace and balance on their island.

I had the pleasure of reading this as an audiobook. The narrator did a wonderful job. She embodied the character of Hera (more on that below) so well and her inflections and speech patterns really suited the style of narration in this book.

I enjoyed this book a great deal more than I expected to. The book is about Penelope and her life as queen, but it is told from Hera’s point of view. She is our narrator, taking us through the story, and standing on the sideline while the events in the mortal world unfold. I love books with a narrator that serve as a character as well, and Hera was extremely entertaining as our guide. We were able to really learn a lot about her as a person (or Goddess) just by the way she would react to situations. I laughed at her jokes and really felt for her when terrible things were outside of her control. Hera’s character felt equally as important as Penelope or anyone else. The story would have hit so differently without her as the narrator.

Aside from the narrator I actually did love every other character in the book. Since this is essentially the story of what happened back on Ithaca during the Odyssey, it focuses very heavily on the women who were left to more or less fend for themselves since every able-bodied man went with Odysseus. The level of secrecy and intrigue was exciting since Penelope couldn’t let it be known how many decisions were made by a woman, and that overall it has actually been a woman ruling without a man’s influence the entire time. The feeling of constantly being on the brink of invasion and having to fend off suitors who want to take her husband’s place on the thrown kept a constant tension throughout the story. Penelope wasn’t doing this alone either. Her network of women, both in and outside of her court, all helping her in secrecy was so fun to see, and again Hera’s commentary about the whole thing really brought it to a new level.

While the situation has been going on for roughly seventeen years, the plot focus mostly around a peak moment of unrest as their shores are getting raided more and more and suitors are hitting their limits with Penelope’s putting them off. Schemes are surfacing and alliances are tested while new ones are forming. I genuinely got worried a time or two when things didn’t seem to be going her way.

This is a fantastic example of a character-driven story and I, personally, could have just kept listening to Hera follow these women around whether or not something epic was happening. I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys lots of well-written characters and a good dose of humor, tragedy, and action.

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