| Title | : | The Sweet Girl |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0307359441 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780307359445 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 236 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2012 |
| Awards | : | Scotiabank Giller Prize (2012) |
Pythias is her father's daughter, with eyes his exact shade of unlovely, intelligent grey. A slave to his own curiosity and intellect, Aristotle has never been able to resist wit in another--even in a girl child who should be content with the kitchen, the loom and a life dictated by the womb. And oh his little Pytho is smart, able to best his own students in debate and match wits with a roomful of Athenian philosophers. Is she a freak or a harbinger of what women can really be? Pythias must suffer that argument, but she is also (mostly) secure in her father's regard.
But then Alexander dies a thousand miles from Athens, and sentiment turns against anyone associated with him, most especially his famous Macedonian-born teacher. Aristotle and his family are forced to flee to Chalcis, a garrison town. Ailing, mourning and broken in spirit, Aristotle soon dies. And his orphaned daughter, only 16, finds out that the world is a place of superstition, not logic, and that a girl can be played upon by gods and goddesses, as much as by grown men and women. To safely journey to a place in which she can be everything she truly is, Aristotle's daughter will need every ounce of wit she possesses, but also grace and the capacity to love.
The Sweet Girl Reviews
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Volela bih da me neko prosvetli jer zaista ne kapiram šta se izdešavalo u poslednjih sto stranica, i poentu svega toga. Knjiga izgleda kao da je sklepana na brzinu, jer ima toliko vidljivih propusta i nerazjašnjenih stvari da ne znam od čega da počnem.
Sažetak knjige zvuči obećavajuće - ćerka se bori sa svojim ocem za kontrolu nas svojim životom, pored toga je ljubavna priča u centru fabule.
Zanimljivo, jer odnos oca i kćerke iako neuobičajen za to vreme, ipak nije kakav je opisan. Štaviše, rekla bih da je Pitija bila poprilično pasivna kada su donošene odluke u njeno ime.
Ljubavna priča - ne znam da li se pod ljubavnom pričom podrazumeva mnogo zainteresovanih osoba muškog pola za devojku koja ne zna šta da radi sa svojim životom? Zaista, ovde se ljubavna priča može pronaći tek u tragovima, ali toliko je minorna da stvarno nije bilo neophodno isticati njenu važnost na koricama knjige.
Knjiga u suštini nije toliko loša. Neki delovi bili su poprilično zanimljivi, ali eto, meni je te delove pomalo zasenilo ovo što sam gore navela. Vidi se da je spisateljica zaista obavila detaljno istraživanje kulture i naroda u to vreme, i taj aspekt mi se zaista svideo. Svidelo mi se i to kako je Pitija toliko toga naučila od svog oca i što je toliko bila žedna znanja, i što je uspevala to znanje i da stekne uprkos lošem položaju žena tog vremena.
Ne znam da li da komentarišem to što sam na svakoj drugoj stranici pronašla neku gramatičku grešku koja mi je bola oči, i zaista, zaista ne razumem zašto velika izdavačka kuća s toliko mnogo izdanja i čitalaca ne posvećuje dovoljno pažnje gramatičkoj ispravnosti prevedenih tekstova. -
I won this book through the first-read contest. I would have given three stars if the book ended on page 117, but since it did not and I have to rate the entire book... I will give it two stars only. I hate writing a negative review for a book that is not even on the market yet, but a review must be truthful. So here it goes...
To start, the title is wrong for this book. There was nothing sweet about this story; even the main character would rather have salt over sweets. The first half was interesting. I enjoyed reading about Pythias' relationship with her father and how he taught her so many wonderful things. The second half felt like I was being rushed through a series of events. It felt like the author had done a lot of research and was trying to cram all that information in part II and III. It was too superficial. I would have like to get more details in order to really understand Pythias' decisions. She was being swayed by the tides of her "not so sweet" life and appeared to have no say in the matter. The end was without consequence and left me wondering if there was really anything worth remembering about this book. -
A whole bunch of nothing.
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Ne preporučujem nikome
Kao prvo sažetak knjige nema veze sa istom. "Neočekivana ljubavna priča"? Nema je. Čak i ova nazoviljubav između muškaraca (da, množina) prema Pitiji je minimalna. "Ova knjiga se bavi duhovnom borbom između oca i kćeri za kontrolu nad njenom budućnošću"? Neema. Odnos njih dvoje jeste neobičan za to vreme, ali je to i očekivano za Aristotela i njegovu ćerku- borbe nema. "Upoznaćemo se sa sazrevanjem devojke.." SAZREVANJEM? Nema.
Stil pisanja očajan (ili je do prevoda?) Preovlađuju rečenice od 4 reči.
Sve je nekako zbrzano i nejasno, kao da je pisao 12ogodišnjak sa trojkom iz srpskog. Uopšte ne vidim trud i rad pisca u ovoj knjizi, čak je i istraživanje tadašnje Grčke i naroda svedeno na minimum. I plus na svakih 20ak strana se naglo menja slika i gubi dodir sa prethodnim likovima bez objašnjenja (što me izuzetno živcira)
Zatim, kada su otac i Pitija ubili neku životinju, mislim da je bilo lane (radi proučavanja skeleta), Aristotel joj je rekao da će da joj bude žao kasnije. Na njeno pitanje "zašto" odgovorio je: "Zato što je slatko". Zar stvarno treba da mislimo da bi on, veliki mislilac i filozof, rekao tako nešto?¿?
Dalje, pojma nemam šta se izdešavalo sa ostalim likovima, šta se desilo sa Klio, Eufranorom (koji je ,kako sam razumela, bog Dionis?), Glikerom..? Plus su likovi skroz nerazvijeni.
Jedina pozitivna stvar kod ove knjige je što ima jako lepe korice. K, šalim se, ima nekih delova koji su bili zanimljivi i uspela sam da završim knjigu tako da baš ne mogu 1 da dam. Stoga (jedva) dve zvezdice -
DNF at 27%. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the worst book I’ve ever read by a long shot, but I just can’t put up with the silliness. The writing style is very simplistic, and it feels like this book is aimed at a juvenile reading level. The text is peppered with As You Know Bob moments (
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...) – where an information dump is attempted to be disguised by a character telling us or another character information that they already know full well – and here it’s done in such a clumsy, obvious way that it got on my nerves.
Worse, the characters speak like 21st century people and this totally destroyed my immersion and suspension of disbelief. Aristotle is referred to as “Daddy” throughout, which seems far too modern and overly familiar besides – “Father” or perhaps “Papa” would have been a better choice. Characters use modern slang such as “freeloaders”, “all right, pet”, and “I’ll write him”. Perhaps the worst example was when, after Aristotle and his daughter kill a lamb for dissection, he tells her she’ll regret it afterwards “Because it’s cute”. Setting aside the fact that “cute” is an American slang term dating from circa 1834, I can’t imagine Aristotle ever explaining it in that manner – I could perhaps imagine him saying something about the empathy of young children or the preciousness of life, something philosophical to genuinely explain why, but “Because it’s cute”?! That just sounds so out of character and such an incredibly modern turn of phrase that it jarred me right out of the story.
Finally, I have to wonder how much research went in to this. Apart from the anachronistic dialogue, the author makes key mistakes, such as describing a man as distinguishable as Macedonian and specifically not Athenian because he wears his hair short and goes cleanshaven like Alexander the Great, his king. The problem with this is that such a styling was not traditionally Macedonian at all; when Alexander styled himself in this way, he was emulating the Athenian mode of appearance (and it later caught on amongst his contemporaries). Ultimately, I just can’t continue with this.The characters feel like they’ve been transported straight out of the 21st century. Welcome to Athens 90210. I cannot buy into it. This just does not provide any sort of plausible, let alone realistic, imagining of ancient Greece. Skimming the rest of the book I don't feel hopeful that it gets any better, so, I’m out.
4 out of 10 -
Generally, I liked the premise of this book. The time period (shortly before Alexander's death and in the immediate aftermath) is a very interesting one in Greece. Hellenistic Greece has just begun to take a shape which will be further defined by Alexander's successors. Aristotle himself is also an interesting character, as a Macedonian philosopher living in Athens. The role of women is a great topic to choose, as it was evolving slowly at this point between Classical Greece and the Roman Empire, and the daughter of a "progressive" philosopher is a great lens to show this through.
All in all, it was off to a great start. But this start sort of spluttered and died.
I think of it as a bit contrived. To me, it seems as if Lyon sat down and researched Hellenistic Greece and Aristotle. Then, she made a list of key points that she needed to show the role of women, the Macedonian Empire, daily life in Greece, and Aristotle's philosophies. She then appears to have written one scene to showcase each of these points and mashed them together into a "vignette" style story with no clear purpose. It's a snapshot of a story - it isn't a whole story. There's a rich world that she left out. It's almost as if this is the first draft for a larger work - who has ever read a historical fiction less than 200 pages?
There were decent moments in this book, which makes me feel even more that it didn't live up to it's potential.
I liked how she did managed to showcase each possible path of Pythias. At this time in Greece, there were really three choices for a woman's role: wife, priestess or hetairai. Pythias sort of muddles through each of these roles. She appears to be making the decisions herself, but really it feels like the author is making the decision for her - forcing her into a role to cover another base in her research about the time period. She didn't stay true to the character of Pythias - I think Aristotle's daughter would have fought harder, tried harder to be what she seemed to want to be - educated. Maybe this is a projection from my own biases. But I feel that the character of Pythias was just as wishy-washy as the plot itself.
That being said, the one thing I liked was the character of Nicanor, and Lyon's portrayal of PTSD - something that's almost never addressed in this era's historical fiction. "In his mind, my husband is still in Egypt, Persia, Bactria, Kandahar, India, Babylon - torching villages, raping peasant girls, starving, night-marching, eternally suffering under the obsession of an eternally suffering king."
I gave it three stars, but I think that's generous. I saw potential and even the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile. But generally, I think it fell flat. -
Last but not least, Annabel Lyon’s The Sweet Girl was the thirteenth and final novel in my Giller longlist reading. I didn’t know much about either the author or the novel going in, which in some respects is a shame since after finishing the book I discovered that Lyon’s previous novel, The Golden Mean, is somewhat of a prequel to this latest offering as it chronicles Aristotle’s time spent mentoring a young Alexander the Great. The Sweet Girl, which can be read stand alone, picks up much later and revolves around the life of Aristotle’s teenage daughter Pythias. Had I known these details upfront the completest in me would have demanded that I read the two works back-to-back, but since I didn’t, I couldn’t, and I’m mostly glad that to have only read the one.
Pythias is most certainly not a sweet girl in anyone other than her father’s eyes. She’s dirty, homely, unkempt, educated (a big no-no) and outspoken. Her idea of a good time is dissecting dead animals to see what makes them tick and then boiling their bodies until the skin slips away so that she can create intricate puzzles from the bones that remain. Yeah, she’s a strange one alright, but the real question is whether or not she’s an exception to the rule of the day that brands women as the inferior sex or an example of what all girls can aspire to be if only they are granted the equal opportunity to partake in the more formal education that is currently reserved only for the males of the species.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/the-s... -
This book took me by surprise. I did not quite know what to make of it. First, it started off with a child's voice. Simple. I was not all that interested, though I kept reading. The idea of giving the daughter of Aristotle some history was fascinating to me. As she aged, the writing got more lively and intelligent and Lyon has her own unique style that captivated me. And I could relate to Pythias, the introspective, gawky, untamed daughter of the master philosopher who fights for a place in society. Then Aristotle dies, and Pythias' life goes on a downward spiral. The book takes some magical realism turns (or is Pythias suffering a nervous breakdown?), and some odd plot twists that made no sense to me. For an intelligent woman who rivaled the Lyceum students, she makes some deranged choices. All to have the book end with a loveless marriage. But then...the very last page gives a final twist that I think most readers miss. I don't see anyone address it in their reviews that I saw. Did I imagine this final twist? Is it intentionally vague??? Don't want to give it away, because despite these plot flaws, the character, setting, dialog, writing is so unique, I still came away with a feeling I read something special.
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The first part of this book was really good but the second part got strange. For some inexplicable reason the author decided to introduce some of the Ancient Greek gods and goddess as characters but then they disappeared just as suddenly as they appeared. I feel like the author didn't know what to do with the second part of the book and so she threw the main character into a bunch of different vignettes of what life was like.
Another complaint I have is this book has no chapters so there is no logical stopping point or scene changes. -
Just didn't like it. Couldn't get into it and was bored so I dropped it. Giller Prize? Really?
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Title is quite ironic: Pythias, the heroine, daughter of Aristotle, is anything but sweet: prickly and feisty might be more like it. We see her childhood in a happy home; Aristotle respects her mind and teaches her. When Alexander dies, as Macedonians, the family leaves Athens for Calchis where Aristotle has property, neglected though it is. He dies and Pythias is left to fend for herself, becoming priestess, helper to a midwife, then a courtesan. In the last part, she marries her cousin, a soldier back from the war, with what we'd call PSTD, and they try to make a life together with him taking up farming. The story ends on perhaps a note of cautious optimism.
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"Pythias is her father's daughter, with eyes his exact shade of unlovely, intelligent grey. A slave to his own curiosity and intellect, Aristotle has never been able to resist wit in another--even in a girl child who should be content with the kitchen, the loom and a life dictated by the womb. And oh his little Pytho is smart, able to best his own students in debate and match wits with a roomful of Athenian philosophers. Is she a freak or a harbinger of what women can really be? Pythias must suffer that argument, but she is also (mostly) secure in her father's regard.
But then Alexander dies a thousand miles from Athens, and sentiment turns against anyone associated with him, most especially his famous Macedonian-born teacher. Aristotle and his family are forced to flee to Chalcis, a garrison town. Ailing, mourning and broken in spirit, Aristotle soon dies. And his orphaned daughter, only 16, finds out that the world is a place of superstition, not logic, and that a girl can be played upon by gods and goddesses, as much as by grown men and women. To safely journey to a place in which she can be everything she truly is, Aristotle's daughter will need every ounce of wit she possesses, but also grace and the capacity to love."
My thoughts on the book- Well, I just couldn't put this book down and I loved the first section. I can see that Annabel Lyon did her research on Aristotle. It is not very often that we get to know a little about his personal life rather than just his work. It was very easy to see that he cared very deeply for Alexander the Great and I would have liked to see this fleshed out a little bit more. The love and conversations between Aristole and his daughter reminded me of Sir Thomas More and his beloved daughter, Margaret.
However, the book goes down hill after Aristotle's death and the departure of Pythias's brother and stepmother. I felt that the events of the book began to take on a more rapid speed- one minute Pythias is battling to maintain her home, then she escapes to the temple, then she is living with a madam/midwife and then she becomes a beggar on the streets? Not to mention that book ends rather abruptly and left me with a very unsatisfied feeling and way too many questions about what would happen next.
There was no author's note at the end of the book and I was disappointed. I really wanted to know where Lyon drew her research from and I wanted to know what happened to Pythias after the end of this book. I couldn't find much on Artistotle's daughter in my own GOOGLE search and wonder if the whole storyline about the daughter and all she went through was mere creative licence. In fact, the only thing that came up was this book.
Not a book that I will consider revisiting in the future. -
This book had the potential to be so much more, instead it sank beneath the waters falling below almost to failure. The story of the daughter in Athens, that seemed to have no revelence later on in the book, but also was one of the stronger parts of the book. The biggest failure in the book it during the muddled climaxes: I just DID NOT CARE!
I won't say this book is wholey bad, and it's a good little read for a type of romance/love novel that isn't really deep (alas puddle deep par for the course on this book). Yet, I still cannot hate it fully, because there are good things too. I don't regret reading this book, but I'm left feeling like there should have been a GREATER book. -
so many readers hated the second half of this book. I thought it was stronger than the first. the vagueness reminded me of Wolf Hall (and I see Mantel blurbed this book) and loved the dream like quality.
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An odd book, which got increasingly more strange and ridiculous as it went on. I was expecting something much better than this, based upon reviews and high ratings given it by others.
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The story was sloppy and hard to follow. It was hard to figure out which character was the focus of the story. Some words don’t seem right for that period. Extremely disappointing.
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A sequel to her much-ballyhooed The Golden Mean (2009), B.C. writer Annabel Lyon's The Sweet Girl is also a coming-of-age novel.
The first explored the prime of the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, the second a tumultuous year in the life of his teenage daughter, Pythias.
The first is about striving for balance, the second, the struggle to survive.
Rest assured, The Sweet Girl - recently longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize - has inherited its predecessor's marvellous ability to wheel between the mind and the body, between thinking and feeling. It is just as canny, just as agonizing, just as alive.
But in The Sweet Girl, gods literally walk the earth. They are not Aristotle's "metaphysical necessity ... remote and oblivious and lost in contemplation," but lurid and powerful realities.
Which, if you're keeping track, makes this both magic realism-tinged fiction and historical fiction.
In addition, where Aristotle's story featured a bipolar polymath forced to learn control, to find focus, Pythias's revolves around class and gender and is steeped in chaos.
Early in the novel, Pythias calls herself "Daddy's Shadow," and it's true, their household revolves around Aristotle's work and his (declining) health.
Pythias is both stubbornly intelligent and much-loved, a combination that allows her to resist the roles assigned to women in ancient Greece while her father is alive.
After he dies and the household disperses, Pythias must somehow step out from behind Aristotle's long shadow, lift her veil, and speak.
This means somehow reconciling her honeyed childhood with the rawness of life as a woman with no money and few choices.
Structurally, the Vancouver-based Lyon, who studied classical music, philosophy and law, has taken a few risks in The Sweet Girl.
The first half of the novel is business as usual, charting Pythias's childhood in Athens and her family's flight to Macedonia after Alexander the Great dies while on campaign in Babylon (what is now Iraq).
The second half is both more and less controlled. The grieving Pythias finds herself unwilling to return to Athens and live in the household of Theophrastos, Aristotle's protégé and successor at the Lyceum.
Theophrastos has opinions about the education of girls, which would mean Pythias's days would be spent at the loom instead of conducting dissections or reading.
So instead Pythias attempts to maintain Aristotle's household while waiting for the man her father wanted her to marry - an older cousin who is a soldier in Alexander's army - to return home.
She fails, of course. She is 16, with no experience running an estate, no allies, and, most important, no money.
And so she becomes an acolyte at a temple of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and protector of young girls. Disheartened by the avarice of the priestesses, she becomes an apprentice to the local midwife/abortionist and then, briefly, a prostitute.
Pythias has just reconciled herself to the realities of her new life when her prospective husband arrives, battle-scarred and deeply exhausted.
She is lucky. Her fiancé doesn't care about Pythias's sexual history or her bookish pursuits. But like Mary Anning, the 19th-century fossil hunter in Winnipegger Joan Thomas's 2010 novel Curiosity, Pythias will never be able to truly transcend class and gender.
Though The Sweet Girl ultimately succeeds in telling a story that is both the same as and different enough from The Golden Mean, readers might find themselves wondering why Pythias considers prostitution to be a better option than a few months of safe boredom.
Also, the second half of the novel is both exhilarating and a burr under the book's saddle. It is both too formulaic and too bumpy.
But, oh, what a ride! -
This was such a weird book; it kept zigging where I expected it to zag, and it kept turning back in on itself rather than going outwards. At first it seems like it is going to be a book about how Pythias is NLOG and gets to be her father's student, but that drops quickly; then it seems like
So it is rather like life, just one thing after another, and nobody ever seems to have much clear agency -- there was never a point in the book where it seemed like a character thought things through, set out on a course of action, and made any real progress. Which is fine; books do not have to be like that at all, but reading this one made me aware of how frequently other books are like that. Pythias never really knows what she wants, or if she does she can't articulate it, much less figure out how to give it, and so she spends a large chunk of the book
I admired Lyon's setting a great deal; her Greece is just comprehensible enough to make things work without ever losing the sense of a very alien place and time. Her prose is solid; nothing stood out particularly to me but it was absolutely good enough to carry the story and characters and evoke her setting. But I never really fell in love with the book; even when I was reading fast and curious about what happened next, I was also still waiting for it to enchant me. -
This review and others can be found on
Cozy Up With A Good Read
I want to start out by saying that you do not need to read THE GOLDEN MEAN to understand what happens in THE SWEET GIRL (I was a little afraid of that when I started). Though I do believe it could be useful at times, it definitely is not necessary. I have always been a huge fan of historical fiction and I'm always interested when I find books like THE SWEET GIRL. I studied a bit of philosophy in university and it was always so captivating.
This story was absolutely enthralling, I loved how Lyon was able to describe Pythias and her relationship with her father, Aristotle. I found myself really connecting with that part because I have such a close relationship with my dad, we do everything together. It was interesting to focus the story on Pythias in a time where women had not rights, I found this to be interesting, watching what Pythias must go through following her father's death. She must try to keep herself safe in a time where most everyone is against her because of her beliefs.
The one thing that was a little disappointing was how short the book ended up being. I felt like I wanted more from the story, I just felt like once Aristotle dies everything seems to move so quickly and then the story just ends.
Lyon does a beautiful job getting her readers to sympathize for Pythias during her journey. She puts herself through everything imaginable just to keep herself and her remaining family afloat. Pythias must deal with the worst of every situation following her father's death and at times it is unsettling seeing what she must do.
Lyon has beautiful writing, and does an excellent job with her research of the time period of her novel. She is able to keep her readers interested in the story as a whole, and even though she writes a perfect ending, I feel like the story itself is too short. I am interested to read THE GOLDEN MEAN to see how everything began. -
One-Minute Review
Ever since Annabel Lyon's The Golden Mean was published, a second book was rumoured. The Sweet Girl turns to Pythias, Aristotle's daughter, to tell the story of his final years, death, and her own life as a young adult. Lyon's new book is, in my view, one of those rare occasions where the sequel improves on an already great original. As well-written and fascinating as The Golden Mean is, it sometimes loses its pace. On the other hand, The Sweet Girl maintains a perfect tempo as it describes a young girl trying to survive in an ancient patriarchal society after her famous father's death. Although the book could be a coming-of-age story simply set in the past, it also comments on individual choice and social expectation while avoiding the temptation to judge history by modern standards. Lyon has written a world that feels like ancient Greece without turning Pythias into a victim. Pythias controls her own destiny through some surprising career choices - including abortionist and courtesan – without ever suggesting that circumstances force her into these roles. The Sweet Girl is great historical fiction where the story remains within the realm of historical possibility, but the characters could step easily into the modern world.
On Twitter:
@Dr_A_Taubman -
While the story does continue from "The Golden Mean," Lyon did a great job with this book on it's own merit. I also want to add that Lyon also does a great job with weaving modern issues with a narrative about Ancient Greece.
Page 12
"For me, it was swimming," Daddy says.
"And what about you, sweet?" Akakios says to me. "Puppies, is it? Kittens?"
"All kinds of animals, really," I say.
Daddy's lips twitch, as I intended. "And she's a great help around the house," he offers.
Akakios waves this away. "You should hear him brag about you." he tells me. "A better mind than many of his students, he syas. Always got her nose in a book. Should have been a boy."
I look at Daddy, who nods, smiling, flushing a little. Yes, I said that. I flush a little myself, with pleasure.
"Bactria, eh?" Akakios says to Daddy, changing the subject. I know that this is the latest news to arrive from the army: the king is in Bactria, at the end of the known world, calling himself Shahanshah, King of Kings, and founding city after city named after himself. Iskenderun, Iskandariya, and now Kandahar, the latest. These days, people announce the king's exploits to Daddy as though he's responsible, Daddy was his tutor, long ago, when I was a baby. It's their way of reminding us we're Macedonian and they're not.
"Indeed," Daddy says. "He's become quite the geographer."
"But maybe not such a cartographer," Akakios says. "He seems to have lost his way home." -
The Sweet Girl follows Pythias, the daughter of Arisotle, through her father's death and subsequent events. This is a rich and powerful account of female life in the ancient world. The subtlety of the narrative is beautifully crafted and is probably what led to my feeling so wound up about what happens to Pytho. We see the little signs as she does, and we feel their consequences just as strongly. For example, when, in adolescence, she is no longer welcome to shadow her father at his symposiums or on his visits to hte school, becoming more of an annoyance than an amusement; when she is persued mercilessly by a lustful calvaryman; when she is forced to become a "worthy companion" just to eat; and when she is forced to marry her unwilling cousin.
This tragic account is all about the breaking of a spirit that had hoped for more, and could have gotten it, had her civilisation not been so damned narrow-minded. It really got under my skin, and set me to thinking about how lucky I am, to have freedom, an education and independence. What about all those women, in my society and in others, who still don't have these things? What progress have we really made, in 2000 years? -
I discarded this one after reading the first 60 pages. I started the novel because I thought it would be a historical novel about ancient Greece, featuring Aristotle (and his daughter!). While the setting is ancient Greece, and Aristotle is present, there are none of the historical details that make historical novels so interesting. Instead, the first-person narrator (the daughter) is more interested in her relationships with the people who live in her household. Those relationships include things like: getting along with her stepmother, teasing/caring for her younger half-brother, giving commands to the household slaves. And, .... of prime importance to our narrator .... being daddy's little girl. The "historical" part is the "what's for dinner" part of the conversation between our narrator and her stepmother (dinner consistes of traditional Greek dishes). Overall, this novel did not hold my interest, not when I have so many other books available to read!
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Beautiful writing and a portrayal of ancient life that surprised me. I appreciated pondering the difficulty Aristotle's daughter might have had after his death and the lack of status women in general suffered. Not hard to believe that, of course. But the modern sounding vernacular put me off and I felt the story was incomplete. Aristotle's daughter went on to have several marriages, not just the one on which the book ends. I feel we would have benefited from knowing how the rest of her life went since the book is billed as being about her life, not a particular phase of it. Bottom line: I guess I expected more.
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A good, quick read.
On the minuses it was a bit vague for me, though I know this is probably due to lack of historical information about Pythias. But I felt that the story (only 230 pages) was a bit skimming. I was also a bit thrown by the first few chapters where the girl talks extensively about her period, which unfortunately might turn off many readers (i.e. men especially)
On the plus, it is an interesting story about a girl in a bad situation who is relatable, and who you can root for. The writing is solid, and the story easy to follow, though I am not really sure if they actually used the word Fuck in the 4th c. as it is used today. -
There's something so wonderfully disjointed and yet entirely cohesive about Annabel's writing: her characters can both see something from afar, like they've been taken out of their bodies, and also completely and carnally up close. They describe things using words I've never considered; they see the world through eyes that no one else does. I'm a sucker for a book set in Ancient Greece, and for feminist works: this hit both of those markers quite, quite nicely.
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Parts I and III of this novel are are wonderful as Ms. Lyon's first volume, "The Golden Mean". However, part II reads like a strange, mystical trip that I can't get a grip on...and it threw me completely out of the story, after being absorbed in it for quite a while. Luckily, the gorgeous prose doesn't desert any section of this novel.
