Picador A Thousand Ships

For decades I have loved retellings of ancient myths, starting with Mary Renault's The King Must Die (about Theseus and the Minotaur), and this new book is very definitely one of the best. I'm currently rereading all my novels around the period of the Iliad and the Odyssey after my interest was reignited by reading Pat Barker's The Silence Of The Girls. So this fitted in neatly.I notice I've always searched out unusual perspectives, the story told by one of the lesser characters. A Thousand Ships darts around dozens of the named women involved in the story of the Trojan Wars, interleaving their stories. Natalie Haynes explains how rich her material was in a brief video on Youtube (/watch?v=DKtT_u-wHek).The author is massively well-informed as a classical scholar. Obviously, this is essential to guide us through the stories written by Homer nearly three thousand years ago! But she is also a stand-up performer so she is able to feed excitement and drama, humour and pathos to the reader in an almost relentless stream. Her writing has vitality and immediacy which brings these women to life. Their problems and desires are different to ours but Natalie Haynes makes us understand far more subtly than simply 'explaining'.You may need your wits about you if your knowledge of the Iliad is sketchy (Helen of Troy had a face beautiful enough to launch a thousand ships etc.) but I suggest three ways to get the most out of this hugely enjoyable novel.*** Use the list of characters which the book includes at the beginning*** Find a map of the areas of the Ancient World you'll be visiting, such as one giving birthplaces of people in the Iliad (at the realmofhistory website)*** Listen to the audiobook, read by the author herself, so you know how the various names of people and places should be pronounced!

Congratulations and abundant thanks to Natalie Haynes for writing this estra-ordinary magnificent masterpiece on the retelling of Troy through the experiences of all the women, mortals, goddesses and everything in-between. I was completely caught up in this saga that I have read so much about through many other books, ALWAYS from the point of view of the men. And that is so limiting and prevents great truths from being revealed. But no more. In A Thousand Ships, the reader experiences Troy, what led up to the war, the war itself and all the ensuing consequences in full glory and a depth of truth and understanding never before achieved through all other writers before Ms. Haynes came along.Someone tried to tell the author that you cannot compare the pain and suffering of those who died in a war to those who stayed home because it is much worse to fight the war. What total nonsense! Pain and suffering is not limited by nor less valued because one is fighting or not fighting in a war. Everyone suffers in so many ways, and all experienced suffering is equal in its experience and equal in its need to be told.The reader is given a vast array of women narrators -- Trojan women, Greek women, Goddesses, nymphs, The Furies -- and they ALL have magnificent tales and the deepest insights to share. Men who before were two-dimensional heroes or losers are given a fuller depiction, and the result is dazzling. Men you thought were great heroes were also filled with fear, ego, lust, greed, envy and jealousy and sometimes downright stupidity. Every character in the Trojan War, including the all too-humanlike gods and goddesses are so much more fascinating. The depth of character study in men and women, mortal and immortal is astounding. So much deepest truth of human nature is revealed in this expertly written novel. It deserves every literary prize that is available.Bravo, Natalie Haynes! And thank you for giving humanity this incredible gift of insight, understanding and truth.

Compared with pat barkers silence of the girls it’s hard to see how this book has added anything to the superb play by Euripides the Trojan women . Disappointed read. There are some great modern takes on the Trojan war this is not one of them

I can’t help but compare ... this is the book Silence of the Girls wishes it could be in its wildest dreams. This is a masterpiece in comparison.Read this in one sitting and I loved it! Very cleverly done. I love how unapologetically female centric it is - I mean it is guided by Calliope herself!I liked how we get some the fleshing out of some of the major characters we know like Hecabe and Penelope but also get some obscure characters like Creusa and Laodamia to give some context about less popular aspects of the war.I enjoyed the bits about the goddesses fighting and the engineering of it.Cassandra’s story filled me with horror - that was the worst I think. Clymenstra’s story was a little confusing in the end. It wasn’t fully wrapped up for me or clear what happened/ why she did certain things.All in great book that I can’t recommend enough.

A re-telling of the postscript to The Iliad from the point of view of the Trojan women who are enslaved by the victorious Greeks after Troy fell…This feminist approach is very much the fashion, and no bad thing for it. It is well done, albeit in a disembodied way: I found little emotional force or intensity in the rapidly changing perspectives. The story races along, following the snippets which are revealed by Homer, but with first person narrators. There are telling realistic touches, but the multi-person structure was too bitty for me and the characters are barely developed.The female perspective on the fall of Troy is hardly new: Euripides’s masterly tragedy, The Trojan Women, was first performed in 415 BC. Haynes’s approach echoes that of Euripides, in focusing on what happens to some of the aristocratic Trojan women after their husbands and families have been killed.