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.

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

Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org →

Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon ↗ · Kindle — Amazon ↗

Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby ↗ · Find at your library — WorldCat ↗

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More ways home: The Emily Wilson Translation (2017) · The Robert Fagles Translation (1996) · The Robert Fitzgerald Translation (1961)

Compare on one axis: How much of the gods do you actually get? (gods center stage)