Ithaca — Claire North
Penelope’s suitor years as a political thriller.
The Odyssey skipped the hard part: twenty years of a woman governing under siege with no army and no husband.
A deeper cut than Atwood: Penelope's suitor years as a tense political thriller, narrated by a goddess with an agenda.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the waiting-years setting (Odysseus absent the whole book).
Changes: it into palace politics. Penelope holds a kingdom together by cunning, and the goddess Hera narrates.
Keeps the waiting years as its setting; Odysseus is absent for the whole book. Changes it into palace politics, with Penelope holding a kingdom together by cunning while suitors circle, narrated by Hera. First of North's Songs of Penelope trilogy (Ithaca, House of Odysseus, The Last Song of Penelope).
Whose story is it?
Penelope’s, along with the island’s women who keep it running.
The feminism angle: Governance and survival as the epic's untold female labor. Where Atwood wrote an elegy, North writes a thriller.
How much time does it ask?
≈12 hr read / ≈14 hr audiobook. First of the Songs of Penelope trilogy.
Hera’s cool, partisan narration. Penelope counts suitors like a war she can’t be seen fighting.
Where to find it
Other ways to get it: Ebook — Kobo ↗ · Kindle — Amazon ↗ · Audiobook — Libro.fm ↗
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby ↗ · Find at your library — WorldCat ↗
Pairs well with: The Return (2024), if you want a chaser in another medium.
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More ways home: The Emily Wilson Translation (2017) · The Robert Fagles Translation (1996) · The Robert Fitzgerald Translation (1961)