Alexandra Pierce Reviews House of Odysseus by Claire North

House of Odysseus, Claire North (Redhook 978-0-31644-400-2, $29.00, 464pp, hc) August 2023. Cover by Lisa Marie Pompilio.

Claire North’s sequel to Ithaca (2022) continues the story of Penelope, Queen of Ithaca: her husband Odysseus absent for two decades, she is trying to manage both the kingdom and a house full of suitors who believe she should stop pretending that Odysseus could still be alive. In Ithaca, Clytemnestra and her children arrived on Ithaca and caused havoc for Penelope, and that continues here. House of Odysseus could be read without Ithaca, if one were familiar with Greek mythology – although the collision of the House of Odysseus with the House of Atreus may give pause – but it is clearly intended as a sequel. (And Ithaca is so good, why would you miss it?)

In the ancient stories, the queen Clytemnestra is killed by her son Orestes after she has killed her husband (and his father), Agamemnon, in revenge for Agamemnon’s killing of their daugh­ter – never let it be said that modern authors invented convoluted stories of revenge. Those stories also relate that Orestes is later plagued by the Furies, who condemn him for shedding maternal blood. This is the story that now comes to Ithaca, as Orestes and his sister Elektra seek to keep Orestes’s apparent madness a secret. North, however, powerfully places this within a political context absent from those early sources: Orestes’s uncle, Menelaus, seeks the opportunity to take his crown, and Orestes’s unfitness is the perfect excuse. Thus three thrones are represented on little windswept Ithaca, and Penelope seeks to balance her commitments to family, peace, and her kingdom with her own needs.

One of the more intriguing aspects of Ithaca was its narration by Hera, a goddess whose voice is rarely heard with any complexity. Sadly, for me, the narration has shifted for this story: it is now Aphrodite, goddess of love and desire, who tells the story. This initially was a confusing choice, given her contempt for Ithaca, but it makes sense with Menelaus’s appearance: he never travels anywhere these days without his queen, and Aphrodite’s favorite, Helen – she of the ‘‘launching a thousand ships’’ fame. I am less convinced by Aphrodite as a narrator than I was by Hera: she’s not so startling a choice, and her vanity and lack of interest in politics aren’t as interesting a presenta­tion. That said, North does give Aphrodite depth of character and insight – she’s no sexy lampshade – and I was won over by the end.

As someone who loves Greek myth, I am fasci­nated by North’s vision of how the different stories can work together, and the fact she makes them approachable for readers with no prior knowledge. Beyond that, I am deeply impressed by her cast of women. From all social classes, a multiplicity of backgrounds, and likewise a range of motiva­tions and expectations and desire, North explores female relationships and complexities beautifully. It’s what I had hoped for from Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018) and did not get. Penelope and her maids – all enslaved – have complex and realistic relationships. Elektra is hard and difficult, the women of the island militia vary in their attitudes and expectations. And North presents a Helen, one of the most written-about characters of the entire oeuvre, who is new and com­plex and tragic and capable and deeply of her society. I don’t tend to love Helen stories because they’ve been told so many times, but this Helen is a worthy addition. I remain deeply appreciative of the fact that this story focuses on Penelope: not young and gorgeous; a maybe-widow (for all she knows) and mother to an arrogant and now absent son; largely dismissed due to her gender. And also intelligent, committed, ruthless, and above all dedicated to her people.

This is a story of palace intrigue, as Penelope and her maids seek to shelter Orestes and Elek­tra, while determining what has made him sick. Simultaneously, they are still confronted by suitors imposing themselves on Ithacan hospitality, and then also by Menelaus and his larger-than-nec­essary squad of Spartan guards who ‘‘helpfully’’ spread out to ‘‘support’’ Penelope and her people. There’s an occasional fight, but they are not the point: it’s all about the cunning, the deception, and the relationships.

I was under the impression that this was Ithaca and House of Odysseus were a duology, and I was appropriately impressed, but I recently discovered that they are the opening books in a trilogy and I am excited. (Very excited.) And trying to figure out who the new narrator will be (there’s one obvious and one less obvious choice, and I’m not sure who I would prefer).

Claire North is taking stories that are nigh on three thousand years old and making them fresh and riveting and well worth your time.

This review and more like it in the June 2023 issue of Locus.

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