Elektra: The mesmerising story of Troy from the three women its heart

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I was looking forward to this because I've read the Sophocles and am familiar with the whole Freudian aspect from within Psychology and frankly, it was just nicely MESSED up as a tragedy. This is something I find particularly important in books including multiple viewpoints; I could tell one woman from another, and I wanted to hear every perspective in turn. The fact that this is a feminist retelling is its biggest selling point, but unfortunately the way it is accomplished only reiterates the degree to which the women are largely passive figures.

This is the story of three women at the heart of the Trojan War whose "their fates inextricably tied to this curse, and the fickle nature of men and gods. It was also not the lack of "magic" (the only supernatural thing was Apollo spitting into Cassandra's mouth). It’s true that these stories almost always focus on men, with the women playing side roles at best, even when they do enough to warrant helming their own stories.More than anything else, reading Elektra made me want to revisit Madeline Miller’s superior The Song of Achilles, because those little moments wherein the women hear about the war stories only made me think , that’s the story I really want to be reading. Cassandra arguably doesn’t belong in this story, but you can’t argue that her part isn’t interesting.

She can't understand that the God's are cruel, that maybe her father was wrong for all he did, and clouded by grief over his loss, her life becomes tainted with ending her mother's. This book starts us off with before the Trojan war; Helen is in Sparta looking for a suitor and men from all over Greece have heard of her beauty and want her for a wife… apart from Agamemnon who meets Clytemnestra (and Odysseus, who finds interest in Penelope, Helens cousin). Clytemnestra and Cassandra's narratives were undeniably fascinating, and for that, this was a worthwhile read for me. Thanks to Netgalley and Flatiron Books for the advanced reader copy and opportunity to provide an honest review.I’m less familiar with the stories of heroes than gods, and I’ve never actually read The Iliad (I know, I know) so the main stories in Elektra were only peripherally familiar to me.