August Reads: Love, Sex and Power
Hello, dear readers - happy September! I’m back again after another brief-ish hiatus, during which I know you have all been sitting around, once again wondering, “what on earth is Eve reading?” Let the wondering cease, for I am about to tell you. Although the reason for my failure to post was once again the fact that I am simply having too much fun, I have also squeezed in some time to read. One of the books I’m about to share with you was started and finished on a flight from Heathrow to JFK, and they had A LOT of movies to choose from, so don’t say I never make sacrifices for you. In the name of honesty though, I will admit that I had time to both start and finish this book, and watch Top Gun (the original). I enjoyed it but was baffled by the fact that anyone could possibly take Tom Cruise seriously as a love interest considering how short he is, not to mention the eerie Scientology stare that shines through even when he’s pretending to be someone else. Anyway, I’m getting off track - please accept this bouquet of book reviews in apology for my three week absence :)
Interestingly, coincidentally, serendipitously (favorite word, couldn’t resist), whatever you want to call it, the three books that I have read in the past three weeks have a common theme! As you may have guessed if you read the title of this post, that theme is, loosely, love, sex, and power. I read books about love and sex fairly frequently as my loyalists know. These three, though, have that added little punch when it comes to the power dynamics involved in sex and love. Specifically - how a woman may gain or loose power in the course of her romantic and/or sexual pursuits. We (that’s a royal we) will be going in chronological order - of when the books are set, not when they were written. This is both for the nice structure and also so that I can save my favorite and most strongly recommended for last. Don’t skip out early - you’ve been warned!
Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood
This is the third novel I’ve read that reimagines Greek mythology from a female perspective. The others were Circe by Madeline Miller (the best of the three) and Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (my least favorite of the three). That, for anyone who’s slow to the point, places Daughters of Sparta right in the middle. To speak generally about these types of books, I think my attitude can be most accurately summed up as: “these retellings are interesting, but not as interesting as they think they are.” The source material is already so insanely rich, that the framework of the story is already there. It would be nearly impossible to turn a Greek myth (any Greek myth) into a novel and have that novel be a dud. I also find it disappointing that the only way these female authors seem to be able to make the story feel more female-focused is to make it all about the feelings. Greek mythology is all about action, not feelings, but if we’re going off book, let’s go really off book! Let’s make these ladies badass. Which brings me to my main criticism of Daughters of Sparta specifically.
This novel tells the story of Klytemnestra and Helen - princesses of Sparta. The mythology varies slightly, but for simplification, Helen, Klytemnestra, and their brothers Castor and Pollux, all hatched out of eggs (two to an egg) after their mother, Leda, “laid” with Zeus in the form of a swan. Yep, it’s everyone’s favorite - Leda and the Swan, baby! Important is the fact that she also “laid” with her husband on the same night, so the number of children who are Zeus’s offspring varies in different tellings. That being said, Helen is always singled out as the daughter of Zeus (in this retelling she is the only one). Klytemnestra marries Agamemnon, King of Mycenae (Greece), and Helen marries his brother, Menelaos. Later Helen runs off with Paris of Troy, which sets off the Trojan War. In that war, Agamemnon leads the Greek forces. I could honestly go on forever talking about the straight mythology, but that’s not the point of this review. I’m doing my best to stay on track when all I really want to do now is go read the Iliad.
The long and short of what I’m about to say is as follows: this novel was a fun read because the mythology is so compelling. This novel was lame because in her effort to make Klyetemnestra and Helen active players in the story, Heywood made them pathetic. Klytemnestra was okay. She’s a dutiful daughter and wife, determined to fit into the mold society has cast for her. She pretty much does exactly that until her husband sacrifices (as in slits her throat on the altar) their firstborn daughter to get a good sailing wind (sorry spoiler alert). Then Klytemnestra vows to murder Agamemnon, which is a total vibe, but even then Heywood really doesn’t go far enough for me. Klytemnestra doesn’t get the vengeful woman moment she deserves, even when she does carry out her vengeance in the end. It’s like Heywood is only going halfway - she’s making sure to keep these women palatable when she could have gone hard core.
Helen on the other hand is the worst in this novel! She doesn’t know she’s Zeus’s daughter - which I thought was lame. She’s almost unbelievably naive, and for lack of a better term, a huge baby. This is the most beautiful woman in Greece, and we all know beauty is power, but this Helen is oblivious to that fact. Her primary story line is the fact the birth of her first daughter traumatizes her so profoundly that she’s determined to never get pregnant again. Okay, fair enough, so she goes to the local “woman who helps with things like that” to get some herbs, etc. that will hopefully prevent pregnancy. Her mission to prevent pregnancy necessarily pushes hubby, Menelaos, away. He stops paying attention to her, and she’s ripe for the picking when Paris shows up and tells her she’s pretty (as if she wouldn’t know that? She’s the most beautiful woman in Greece!). Anyway, her lameness continues when she arrives in Troy with Paris.
I realize that I’m being harsh, and I understand Heywood’s point that because of the social and cultural conditions of the time, it was nearly impossible for these women to claim agency. I’m just tired of that narrative. Who’s to say that Klytemnestra wasn’t as thirsty for glory as her husband was? That she wasn’t the one who urged him into war? She (and her new lover/king) did murder him and take his newly enriched throne when he got home. And who’s to say that Helen wasn’t kicking ass and taking names upon arrival in Troy? That she didn’t know that she was powerful, and that she didn’t think she deserved to be fought over? The whole point is to turn the women of Greek mythology into active figures instead of passive victims, but I don’t think Daughters of Sparta does that successfully. I think both of them are badder in the original mythology than they are in this retelling.
Summer by Edith Wharton
On to a very different kind of story, and a much later place in time, this is the one I picked up at Heathrow and read start to finish on my plane ride home. The only other book I’ve read by Edith Wharton is The House of Mirth, and the way I felt about Summer was somewhat similar to my opinion of that other novel: love the writing, captured by the story, confused and disappointed, but also still moved by the ending. The plot is also somewhat similar, though the settings and cast of characters look different - both are fallen woman stories.
Though written roughly a century later, and set in rural America instead of rural England, and a great deal shorter, and much more explicit (still not explicit at all) in the details of what must happen in order for a woman to become fallen, this book reminded me of Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell. Mainly just in the sense that what a woman must do to be redeemed after her “fall” seems like a great deal more than it should be. In addition to that though, I kept forgetting when and where we were. Summer was published in 1917, and from what I can gather, set around the same time in rural New England. However, to me it felt like large chunks of the novel go by without temporal signifiers. It could be 19th century England, but for references to the Fourth of July, the fact that young ladies don’t need chaperones.
The basic plot follows seventeen year old Charity Royall, adopted daughter of Lawyer Royall, an unsavory, alcoholic, lonely-thus-creepy, man, who is nonetheless a respected member of the North Dormer community. We are told that Charity was born on the Mountain - basically in a remote and extremely poor community outside the bounds of civilized society. Mr. Royall and his wife (deceased by the start of the novel) raise Charity as their own, and though we are made to understand that Mr. Royall is, for simplicity’s sake, a bad person, it is also clear that he has provided for Charity and cared for her through her life. When our novel begins, Mr. Royall has (in the somewhat recent past), propositioned Charity late one evening (once) and proposed marriage to her (once). Charity rebuffs him, knocks him down a peg, and assumes a position of power over him by nature of the fact that he made these embarrassing advances. And so, they live together mostly silently, somewhat contentiously, and Charity feels secure, but lonely and trapped.
Enter: young architect from the city, Lucius Harney. He’s handsome and attentive and doesn’t seem to care that Charity is from the Mountain even though everyone else acts like it’s a black mark. In fact, Harney tells her that it makes her more interesting. I think we can all see where this is going. Charity has felt powerless, and even worse, powerless under a man that she doesn’t respect. On the most basic level, Harney represents a way for her to exert her agency, and that’s exactly what she does. Charity has a raucous spirit topped off with a layer of obstinacy, so she dives right in. First it’s just a friendship, though one that sets off gossip in the village. Charity doesn’t care what people say, and what they say isn’t true anyway. Then it’s more than a friendship - what people are saying is true, but Charity still doesn’t care. She feels empowered by her romance, though a keen reader will note that any woman (or person) who thinks about their life like this: “she could imagine no reason for doing or not doing anything except the fact that Harney wished or did not wish it,” is not super empowered.
Regardless, if you let yourself get carried away with Charity, the main chunk of the novel before things go awry (predictably awry if you haven’t let yourself get carried away with Charity) is fun to read. She’s in love for the first time, and Wharton captures the nuances of that newness expertly. Unfortunately, the power that Charity is able to find in flouting the constraints of her surroundings is fleeting. When it goes (and I’m keeping this vague to avoid spoilers), she is left in a far worse position than the one she was in before. She is not able to save herself from the depths to which she falls. She must be saved - by Mr. Royall, no less. Ugh - I won’t go on. I like Wharton but I’m not going to tell you this is a must read.
Willful Disregard by Lena Andersson
This one was my favorite! Big, huge, special thank you to Lisa Huffines for the recommendation. This is the one that I most urgently implore you to read, which means that I will write the least about it. I ordered it and read it without any context aside from this text (from Lisa): “Quick but smart read about unrequited love. You could read it in a day which would actually be awesome. Never been so confident in a book rec.” I read it in a day and a half, which was awesome, and now I’m just as confident in recommending it. On the same note, I also really enjoyed reading it without knowing anything more than the above, so if you, dear reader, are up for that kind of surprise, stop reading here and order this book!
For those of you who need more convincing, I’ll give you just a little. It’s not long, it’s easy to read (which doesn’t mean it’s an “easy read” - important distinction), it’s engaging, it’s relatable, it makes you think, and it’s downright funny. Our protagonist is Ester. She’s a poet and writer with a profoundly logical (almost to the point of being unemotional) outlook on life. Or at least she’s like that until she is asked to give a lecture on the artist Hugo Rask. From there, she’s essentially fucked. Even before she meets him (at said lecture), the him that she knows, which is the him that she has created in researching the real him, is the object of all her attention and affection.
Hugo is kind of the worst - and Ester knows it, but it doesn’t matter. The ship has sailed. Before there is any hint of romance (outside of Ester’s mind, at least), and long before things actually veer into the romantic/sexual realm, our poor dear Ester turns her life upside-down for Hugo. As in, she breaks up with her long-term partner, who she lives with, and moves back in with her mother. I mean you’ve gotta be high on something pretty strong to make a move like that for nothing more than a possibility. And that’s just the beginning of the insanity - things do eventually progress between Ester and Hugo, but to no end. The strength of this novel lies not in what is happening, but rather in what is so clearly (to the reader) not happening. And in Ester’s ability to logically parse out the difference between the happened and the un-happened, and from there her ability to completely ignore that logical parsing.
I don’t even know if that’s a super clear explanation, but that’s the best way that I can describe what I was marveling at for 196 pages straight. Lena Andersson truly nails it - knocks it out of the park. The portrait she paints is quite extreme, but it’s startlingly recognizable. You and I may not create entire relationships in our minds, building them up upon the frailest scaffoldings, although I do know a few people who have done some version of that, and I’m sure you do too. But who of us hasn’t been here: “She was absolutely not going to call him today. She called. He didn’t answer,” or here: “It’s not worth it, she felt. It’s always worth it, she thought. Worth it or not, I can’t give it up, she thought and felt”? This novel is littered with priceless little gems like those - big chunks of my copy are underlined every other page, because it’s all just so funny and so on the nose.
Overall, I found this book to be delightful. Even though it basically tells the tale of one woman’s descent to the total depths of emotional self-harm, which could be kind of depressing, it was a delight. Maybe it’s the common humanity of it - and the way that it reminds us that we need not let our emotions become our reality. It’s the story of something we’ve all been through (in varying degrees), and it’s a cautionary tale. Honorable mention for “the girlfriend chorus” which pops up here and there to provide the hilariously accurate commentary that comes out when one person tries to talk to friends about a relationship that those friends damn well know shouldn’t take up another minute of anyone’s time. So much for writing less about this one than the others - go get a copy and read it. TTYL.