While the bulk of the book focuses on Penelope and Cassandra, giving them their own chapters, we also get to meet plenty of lesser-known characters who are also given their part to play in the story.
Rather, Natalie Haynes simply seeks to explore the underused perspectives when it comes these classic mythological stories, and she does so in a brilliant manner which doesn’t feel forced in the slightest. It didn’t take me long to see my worries in this regard were wrong and unfounded while it is a retelling of a classic story from the women’s perspective, feminism certainly isn’t the focus here. I’ll be honest, I was rather apprehensive of this novel at first, but I decided to give it a shot for the glowing recommendations surrounding it. In a time when the fight for gender equality can sometimes take absurd, ridiculous and even harmful shapes, it’s a little easy to overlook a novel such as this one and think of it as nothing more than a feminist manifesto. The first thing I’d like to address is the knee-jerk reaction which I had, and I assume many other male readers just had as well. From Penelope, Cassandra, and Penthesilea to the common women of Troy who saw their city go up in flames, their perspectives are used to fuel this new retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes flips our perspective on the matter of the Trojan war, showing it instead from the perspectives of the many women who were involved in it one way or another. When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. While it’s certainly understandable considering how society functioned at the time those stories were written, I think it would be disingenuous to deny women likely had a greater role to play than the old tales would lead us to believe. If there is one aspect of these classic stories which doesn’t translate well to modern times, it’s the lack of focus placed on female characters. For reasons which will soon become apparent, foreknowledge of the story is recommended. If the story in question has somehow escaped your field of vision or your memory of it is shoddy, then I would recommend brushing up on it before diving into this book. We all know the story revolving around the Trojan horse, at least in its broad strokes… at least I’ll assume as much going forward.
Thus, it’s not surprising inquisitive authors such as Natalie Haynes want to deepen their exploration, as she does in her latest novel, A Thousand Ships. They capture and illustrate basic truths about the human condition as simply and concisely as possible.
Classic stories from Greek antiquity have stuck around to become known to people from all cultures and nationalities for one particular reason.
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