Real Life (not mine, personally, mine is just very busy) in terms of global politics being a continued horrorshow, I find myself dealing with it in vastly different ways in terms of fandom - either reading/watching/listening to things (almost) entirely unconnected - for example, this YouTube channel by a guy named Elliot Roberts whose reviews of all things Beatles as well as of musical biopics of other folk I can hearitly recommend for their enthusiasm (or scorn, cough, Bohemian Raphsody, cough), wit and charm - , or consuming media that is very much connected to Current Events. For example: about two weeks ago there was a fascinating event here in Munich where an Israeli author, Yishai Sarid, who is currently teaching Hebrew Literature at Munich University was introduced via both readings from several of his novels, many, though not all of which are translated into German, and via conversations. While the excerpts of already published novels (and the conversations around them) certainly were captivating, and led me to reading one of them, Limassol, which is a well written Le Carréan thriller in the Israel of 2009 (when it was published) context), the novel he talked about which I was most curious about hasn't been translated into German yet, though it has been translated into English: The Third Temple.

This was was originally published in 2015 and evidently has been translated into English in 2024, with an afterword by Yishai Saraid in which he basically says "people thought I was kidding or writing sci fi in 2015. I wish. I could see where this is going then, and now you can, too". If I tell you that a reviewer back in the day according to google described the novel as "if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child", you may guess what it's about. I will say that if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child, I wouild expect it to be a female rather than a male narrator, but yeah, other than this. ( A spoilery review ensues. )

The second Tesh novel in a couple of weeks for me, thanks to friendly comments pointing out a new one was about to be published. This one in a completely different genre: magical school story with some horror mixed in instead of military space opera with some dystopia. Unusually and refreshingly for any type of school story, our heroine and central character is one of the teachers, and so is most of the supporting cast. There are four students who are important to the plot in the way teachers are in other boarding school stories - from Enid Blyton to Harry Potter - , which is to say, you get to know them, but strictly from the outside, they are plot relevant, but the narrative emphasis is strictly on the teacher side of things, not just in terms of our central character but also the main supporting characters.

Since Dr. Walden (first name Sapphire which is her parents‘ fault; friends refer to her as „Saffy“, but the narration and her own pov call her „Walden“ almost through the entire novel) is near forty and a determined bisexual workoholic, the difference to the Young Adult tone with which many a boarding school story usually arrives is there from the start. At first, the novel seems to go for wry comedy as we get to know the characters and the setting; the rules for this particular universe are established: An AU in which magical abilities are publically known and a thing; the problem is that teenagers with their magical abilities running wild and them not yet able to really control them are the favourite snacks of demons, both, depending on the size of the demon, in the literal sense or via possession or for the smallest imps just via annoyance by them possessing machines. I mean, we all knew that about printing machines and photo copiers in offices, right? Anyway, hence the need for schools simultanously teaching the kids how to control their abilities and doing their best to save them from ending up as snacks. This can be difficult because teenagers by definition think THEY are invulnerable and able to conjur up the cool demons, which is why in addition to the regular teachers like Walden, there are also „Marshals“, i.e. magical cops who mostly don‘t have an academic background but excell at demon fighting. We open the novel with Walden meeting the latest Marshal, Laura Kenning; there is mutual resentment and UST from the get go.

It comes more and more evident that larger demons are no laughing matter and really incredibly dangerous, though the black humor never leaves the narrative tone, either. Walden, for all that she oozes competence and cool in the present, had A Tragic Event in her own youth; basically she‘s female Rupert Giles if you‘re a Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and/or female John Constantine from Hellblazer, if John/Joanna had gone into teaching after the event in question), and while she is really as good as she thinks she is in all things magic, she also is slightly hubristic because of it, and that becomes highly plot relevant. I also appreciate that she has a genuine passion for teaching. As for the demons, they‘re gratifyingly complicated and alien; leaving the comic relief ones you find in printers (I KNEW IT) aside, the reader is presented with two important ones, and while the first one‘s goals are obvious and very Exorcist the tv show, what the other one is up to is infinitely trickier and yet the hints are there early on.

By now, I‘ve found out that there were some complaints re: Some Desperate Glory regarding the characters being queer but their romances only seen in glimpses, so to speak, which I thought was appropriate for the characters and the story of Some Desperate Glory (plus it invites fanfic), but I take the general point, so let me say that Walden‘s romantic and sexual life gets more narrative room, plus Walden/Laura is central to the plot. Also, the novel avoids two extremes I find annoying which some media take with bisexual characters: either a character is declared to be bi but we only ever see him or her with one gender of romantic partner, i.e. the opposite if it‘s a more main stream show (looking at you, Da Vinci‘s Demons) or the same (Torchwood fanfiction; the show itself gave more screen time to Jack‘s same sex romances, but we did get some examples of him and women as well); OR there is the cliché of the evil, disturbed or at least amoral bisexual, unable to commit and breaking hearts that way (famously Basic Instinct, but also the novels of an author I otherwise really like, Sosan Howatch). By contrast, both in the past and in the present Walden is someone the reader sees to be attracted to people of both genders, we‘re not just told that in theory she is, and she‘s emotionally involved in the relationships in question (with one exception). (While at the same time being a sensible force for good. )That said, it is rather clear which relationship in the present we‘re meant to root for. *g*

In conclusion, this was another highly readable and very captivating novel by this author, who I hope will gift us with many more in the years to comem.

Suzanne Collins: Sunrise on the Reaping.

Personal background: Unlike, I imagine, a great many of Hunger Games readers/viewers, I actually wasn't yearning for a Haymitch prequel. Now of course I had loved Haymitch in the original novels - I mean, who didn't? - , but part of what I loved was that in contrast to our young heroine and the majority of characters, he was middle aged, broken, cynical yet, as it turned out, still able to fight, plan, and win against the tyranny. As for Haymitch as a young man, I thought the glimpse we got when Peeta and Katniss find the recording of "his" games and his few remarks were all we needed to know. If anything, I would have wanted to read about how Haymitch later connected and bonded with the other Victors, something quintessential to the plots of both Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

However, I had been pleasantly surprised by Songbird and Snakes, aka the young Coriolanus Snow prequel (ironically more the film than the book - I thought the book was good but did not quite achieve what (at least I assume) it wanted to do, whereas the movie did -, and also Suzanne Collins, like the rest of us, is living in a world where propaganda, spectacle and autocracies are flourishing more than ever, and thus I was curious whether this would be reflected in the novel. Which I've now read.

( Here are my mostly positive spoilery thoughts. )

Daredevil 4.05 + 4.06: ( Spoiler cut just in case. )

Wheel of Time 3.05: Interesting as all the history last episode was, I'm glad we're catching up with everyone else here. ( Some spoilers ensue. )

Two novels, a duology though they can be read independently, I suppose, about Cecily Neville, mother to Edward IV, Richard III and Margaret of Burgundy. Cecily shows up in Wars of the Roses fiction usually as a supporting character - she's the very sympathetic and admirable matriarch in Sharon Penman's Sunne in Splendour and the priggish harridan of a mother-in-law in Philippa Gregory's White Queen, and in Shakespeare her most memorable scene is cursing her own son and telling him she hated him from babydom onwards. But I don't think I've seen historical fiction choosing her as a central character that satisfied me, until these two novels. Without spoilers: they're entertaining and well written. It's not that I'm on board with every single narrative choice, but the author sells me on most, and I really appreciate that both novels use considerable page time showing Cecily relating to the other women in the Wars of the Roses - in the first novel mainly Jacquetta of Luxembourg (later Woodwville) and Marguerte d'Anjou, in the second Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville. Not all these relationships are positve, does does Cecily always do the right thing, but they're complex, and I'll say more about all of them in the spoilery section. Cecily's relationship with her husband, Richard, Duke of York, is a believable version of the "arranged marriage becomes true love and partnership" trope, and her relationship with each of her surviving children - not solely the three sons, but also her daughters - is individualized and unique. Despite having read my share of non fiction and fiction of this era, I don't think anyone else used the fact Cecily's mother had been a Beaufort as well (the youngest daughter of John of Gaunt and Katqherine Swynford) and that thus Cecily was related to various key players on the Lancastrian side this well.

Now, on to the spoiler section.

( Cecily )

( The King's Mother )

In conclusion: two very readable historical novels about one character from the Wars of the Roses who despite being important hasn't gotten such a well written central spotlight yet. Can reccomend.

I was in London mostly for work reasons this last week, but I did get some sightseeing and friends meeting done as well, not to mention some book shopping and theatre going, and I'll post a pic spam as soon as I am able. But first, have some reviews:

Plays:

Antony and Cleopatra: staged at the Globe, with Nadia Nadarajah and John Hollingworth in the titular roles. Antony and Cleopatra is one of those plays which just doesn't work for me when I read it but magically does work when I see it performed. In this particular case, there was of course also the charm of seeing it played on a reconstructed Elizabethan theatre, and the particular concept of this specific production, which was letting the Egyptians talk in sign language and the Romans out loud. (Going by the programm, the actors playing the Egyptians are indeed deaf; the Roman actors learned how to do British sign language as well.) (The costumes went for a standard antiquity look.) This made for strengths and weaknesses - on the one hand, the audience was focused even more on facial and body language, plus Antony either using sign language as well or not immediately said something about his current standing with Cleopatra, and the production had the audacity of letting their last scene play out mostly silent - you could have heard a needle fall, and it was breathtaking. On the downside, it meant that early on, the audience had to make up their minds whether to read the subtitles (the play was subtitled throughout, i.e. deaf people could enjoy the solely spoken parts as well) or watch the performances until getting in the rhythm of things. Also, some of the poetry of the language was lost - well, expressed in a different way, I suppose, but the last time I saw this play staged, it was at Stratford with Patrick Stewart as Antony and Harriet Walters as Cleopatra, and once you've heard these two recite those lines...

Otoh: the one point where we hear sounds from Cleopatra - after she, Iras and Charmian have been taken captive by Octavian's people, and a soldier holds her so she can't sign, meaning she has to speak out loud - it felt like a horrible violation, which tells you something about how immersed into this performance I've become.

Hadestown: a musical of which I'd heard a lot of good things, and justly so. Takes both the Orpheus & Eurydice and the Hades & Persephone myths and narrates them in a vaguely Depression era environment - but not "secularized", as it were, i.e. Hades isn't simply an industrialist, he really is a god and Persephone a goddess, etc. This said, the musical does lean into the whole Hades = Pluto = Plutocrat, master of the riches of the earth - symbolism, and the power he has is that of money in a world full of poverty; the famous scene in Ovid where Orpheus manages to make all the Shades who are getting punished in the Underworld - Tantalus, Sisyphus, even the Furies themselves - stop their torment and cry transforms into him being able to stop the exploited Dead/factory workers who've just given him a beating on Hades' behalf from working and make them feel again, for example. Eurydice doesn't get bitten by a snake, she makes a deal with Hades, who in turn is on the outs with Persephone, who increasingly can't cope with the constant switching between Underworld and World of the Living that makes her life. The fifth lead is Hermes (played by an actress looking Dietirch-esque in 1930s suits). The music is great, and the musical has the courage of its convictions apropos the ending.

Stranger Things: The First Shadow: yep, it's a theatre play that works as a prequel to the Netlix series, written by Kate Trefry based on a story from her and Jack Thorne (who has written Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as a way to prove he can write sequels/prequels to hits in another medium). Set during the 1950s, this is the tale of Henry Creel (as sketched out in flashbacks in s4 of the show), plus a new character, Patty Newby (adopted sister of Bob the Hobbit whom Joyce dated in s2), with the teenage versions of Joyce, Hopper, Bob and to a far lesser degree the parents of our future heroes getting involved in varying degrees as things go increasingly weird. ( Spoilers for the play and the series ensue. )

Books:

Sarah Gordon: Underdog: The Other Other Bronte. Poor Charlotte. Whenever she shows in fiction these last few years, it seems to be as a villain and/or the embodiment of sibling jealousy. Last year, she played the role of the envious sister in the frustrating movie Emily about
guess who; this year, she's the bad girl in this play which I did not have the chance to watch but bought the script of. It's (supposed to be) about Anne and much as the novel The Madwoman Upstairs does, about how Charlotte done her wrong. (Different authors, btw, but both postulate Charlotte, realizing her first novel The Professor sucked, stole the premise from Anne's Agnes Grey to create Jane Eyre. Only this play goes way beyong "Jane Eyre is a plagiarized Agnes Grey!" charge and the historically more accurate "Charlotte didn't allow any reprintings of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall once Anne was dead and thus is responsible for Anne's masterpiece getting forgotten for a century until it was rediscovered"; nope, Underdog has Charlotte constantly belittle and bully Anne like you wouldn't believe. (What about Emily? may a Bronte reader familiar with the fact Anne was closest to Emily and vice versa in the famliy ask. Well, much like Anne hardly shows up in Emily the movie, here Emily is an also ran in Underdog the play until near the end, when she tells Charlotte off for constantly bullying Anne just before her death. But really, otherwise she's just sort of there and not really taking Anne that seriously as a writer, either. As for Anne: supposedly this is her play, but the authorial eagerness in making her the perfect (not Victorian perfect, 21st century perfect) heroine who can see that Charlotte and Emily write unhealthy m/f relationships and is the true pioneer of feminist fiction paradoxically means she's never three dimensional. Also, this is a tale told by its villain, i.e. Charlotte. There's just one sequence where Charlotte isn't present and which isn't about her (Anne's first governessing job). But otherwise, Charlotte is the narrator, trying to justify herself but really unmasking, in a very 19th century novel style, though Wilkie Collins more than any of the Brontes. In conclusion, To Walk Invisible the movie is still the only take on the Sisters which manages to portray all three with sympathy and skill.

Katherine Moar: Farm Hall. Another play, this one set in the titular place in1945 where the British government hosted the German scienistst they'd gotten their hands on until the nuclear bomb(s) dropped, trying to figure out by recording them how far the German atom bomb project had gotten and what they knew. It starts with a quote from Michael Frayn of Copenhagen fame and very much feels like Copenhagen fanfiction in terms of Heisenberg's characterisation (maybe a touch sharper about his ego early on, but two thirds in, in the aftermath of the Hiroshima news, he does talk Otto Hahn through how it could have worked, thus as in Copenhagen providing the counter argument to "he wouldn't have been able to figure out the key bits anyway"). However, it's much more of an ensemble piece. A well done play, but unfortunately I kept having my disbelief suspension snapped, for example when they have some of the German scientists wonder about American movies being so popular and being produced with so much effort when there's a war going on. Dear Katherine Moar, while the German film industry undoubtedly greatly suffered from the Nazi caused exodus of many incredibly talented people, it really got dream funding from the government (a firm believer of panem et circenses, Goebbels), and was producing films for the purpose of entertainment and propaganda right until the bitter end. I mean, freaking Goebbels ordered parts of the army to play spear carriers in Veit Harlan's Colberg in 1944. =>' No German living at that time would have been the least bit surprised that the US film industry is doing well in the war. Also, I had the impression the Carl Friedrich von Weizäcker characterisation is mostly based on him being the son of a prominent, privileged family, so he gets to be the spoiled young man of the ensemble, and wellllllll, not the impression I had. Most characters go through similar arcs - they start out feeling smug in their scientific superiority and determinedly not talking about recent genocides, get the superiority shattered and, some of them, starting to confront the recent past. As fanficton, it works; I'm not sure it does as a play.

Lucy Jago: A Net for Small Fishes. A novel that deals with the same Stuart court scandal I wrote a story about, Frances Howard (Essex, Somerset) and the Overbury Affair, in this case, though, narrated by Anne Turner, the long term friend who got Frances the poison. It's written with much sympathy for both ladies, Anne and Frances, and when I came to the afterward, I saw it drew from the same main source I had used ("The Trials of Fances Howard", i.e. the most recent and most balanced account of the Overbury affair. Lucy Jago doesn't provide Frances with the same motives I speculated about, but I find her version plausible as well, and I appreciate the complexity of the relationships - especially Anne and Frances (I was half afraid she'd do a Philippa Gregory and go for the mean girl/ exploited good girl approach, but no, absolutely not). Even bit players like Queen Anne are interesting. A compelling historical novel.

Aka the second volume in her series about Giulia Farnese, the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander VI.) and sister to Alessandro Farnese (aka Pope Paul III.) (The first book was "A Blackened Mirror", which I reviewed here.) It's as engaging and enjoyable to read as the first one, provided you like your Renaissance colourful and your Borgias sympathetic, which I very much do.

It's 1492, Pope Innocent is dying, which means Rodrgio Borgia is about to embark on his life time goal of getting elected as Pope. But the competition is as fierce and ruthless as it's ever been, and our heroine Giulia, who at this point has been his mistress for two years, basically is the Josh Lymon (or would that be Leo?) to his not yet President Bartlett, making and using contacts, arranging and negotiating votes from other Cardinals via their mistresses while Rodrigo & Co. are locked up in the Conclave and not supposed to be in contact with the outside world. (But of course they are. In various degrees of discretion. If one guard takes bribes from too many Cardinals and thus gets caught, though, everyone is screwed for a while and scrambling to find other channels.) If, that is, she's not foiling assassination attempts on either her beloved or herself. Half the fun of this particular novel is Giulia-as-campaign-manager/fixer negotiating with other (older than her) women, all wily and tough in their own right. Earlier on, Rodrigo's son Cesare, who was off to school in the last volume but gets on stage here, who is exactly her own age, asks her what she can do that he can't, since he, of course, is also helping with the electioneering, and this is what. (Fear not, Cesare fans, he also gets plenty to do. Not least because what Giulia can't do is sword fight. Young Cesare is suitably dashing with a good deal more cynicsm than his old man but also some not immediately obvious yearning for more acknowledgment, which Giulia spots.) (Also, one of the ladies Giulia is negotiating with is the courtesan Fiammetta, who immediately is taken by Cesare's hotness, which is mutual. Fiammetta - who historically had a long term affair with him - doesn't often show up in Borgia fictionalisiations for some reasons, or if she does, is barely mentioned. Here, she's an important supporting player, worldly, witty and that rarity, a non-noble woman of independent means who's made a success of her courtesan career and can afford to choose her affairs now.)

Other than Cesare, Fiammetta, and various other female power players of Renaissance Rome with a vested interest in which Cardinal wins the papal election, the novel introduces us to a Jewish family in need of sanctuary. They couldn't have picked a worse time - Rome while one Pope is dead and before the next Pope was voted into power was basically a lethal free for all, even leaving aside the Antijudaism -, but Giulia takes them in anyway, which btw isn't the type of anachronistic giving your historic heroines modern attitudes but foreshadows Rodrigo Borgia's deciding that Rome would take in loads of Jewish refugees from Spain (a papal decision far more sympathetically regarded in our time than it was back in the day, and btw, much as I disliked great parts of the third season of The Borgias, I loved that they included Rodrigo's Jewish sympathies as well). This plotthread is also connected to something I really love about Jo Graham's version of Giulia Farnese, which is that she's a passionate book lover and geek. (Part of Rodrigo's early attraction in the last volume was that he offered her books.) I really like it if a historical novel remembers to give its main characters passionate interests that aren't only brought up when servicing the plot but are part of their constant characterisation, and that is very much the case with Giulia.

Something that did surprise me a bit, though not in a negative way, is that Rodrigo's main long term opponent and bane, Cardinal della Rovere (future Pope Julius) continues to be kept of page, so to speak, solely talked about, but not yet making personal appearances. It makes sense, since Giulia is our pov character, and della Rovere spends his time in the Conclave for most of this volume where Giulia decidedly is not, but I'm ever more curious what he'll be like in person in this version. In the meantime, last volume's villain, Virginio Orsini, makes an encore appearance, and we're introduced to the very intriguing Ascanio Sforza, both rival and (for now) temporary ally in these papal elections.

In conclusion, it's another great novel by Jo Graham, and I hope she'll stay in the Renaissance a good long while, no offense to Napoleonic France. It's one of my favourite eras (to read about; I wouldn't have wanted to live there). (Though our current era shows disturbing similarities - never mind.)

Listening to historical podcasts has now brought me to History of Egypt, which is very well made, with the various reigns by monarchs as a red narrative thread but by no means exclusive, as there are also plenty of episodes on mythology, music, religion, calendar, and depending on the time we're in close ups on the archaeological evidence we have of non-royal lives. Since I was in an Egyptian mind set, I browsed through another old and early favourite of mine, Pauline Gedge's novel Child of the Morning about Hatshepsut. Teenage me loved it and even in her 20s me cried her heart out upon rereading it every damn time. Going back now I did not cry anymore, and I did see flaws younger me had not noticed, but all in all, it held up pretty well. I mean, you can see it was the author's first novel and also that research has marched on since the 1970s which is when this was published, but: it reads beautifully, very atmospheric, and it manages to get across things like the intense every day presence of religion, or the lack of an incest taboo. Our heroine, Hatshepsut, genuinely believes herself chosen by Amun and talks of herself as beautiful the way Egyptian monarchs often do in inscriptions but modern day literary main characters meant as sympathetic don't. (Especially female ones, who more likely are bound to have a hang up about their looks and whose true beauty is only recognized by other sympathetic characters.) She's also that rarely, ambitous to rule from childhood onwards but with a strong ethical compass; no assassinations for Hatshepsut. (This, in fact, in the age of the antihero(ine) makes her unusual in a different way than she was when this book was published; I bet nowadays some readers are disgruntled she doesn't kill her nephew and stepson, knowing he will one day destroy her. (Sidenote: this is one of the "research has moved on" things - today, the assumption is that Hatshepsut died of natural causes and the the relationship between her and Thutmos III was mostly positive, since his attempt to remove her from public memory did not happen after the transfer of power but several decades later, near the ned of his own life.)

The flaws I was talking about earlier: mostly the snobbery I don't think is intended by the author. (I.e. not the ancient Egyptian types. Not just Hatshepsut but also her mother and her older daughter are elegant and beautiful; otoh, the royal concubines who weren't born princesses are vulgar and only superficially pretty, be they the mother of Hatshepsut's half brother (Thotmes II) or of her nephew and stepson Thotmes III. Ms Gedge, I bet those ladies, not being the product of incesteous unions, might have had better genetics in terms of physical health and looks. (Senmut is the lone non-aristocratic character who is still as dashing, smart and able as any born aristocrat.) (The characterisation of Aset and to a lesser degree Mutnofer as vulgar schemers is also in contrast to the three dimensional presentation of Thotmes III, who is Hatshepsut's eventual doom but not written as evil by the narrative; he and Hatshepsut have a genuine respect for each other's abilities and she does wish at one point he was her son.) There's also the way that uprisings against Egypt are treated as incomprehensibly ungrateful and barbaric on the side of the rebels, but that would be how the Egyptians saw it, and we never get a no-Egyptian pov, so I can wave it away, but we do get other povs than Hatshepsut and all the other pov characters still go on about the vulgarity and spitefulness of Aset and what not, so I can't.

All this said, it didn't stop me from still appreciating the novel, not least because while by now I have read others featuring Hatshepsut, this one is still for me the best focused on Egypt's most famous female ruler (before Cleopatra).

Leanda de Lisle: Henrietta Maria: Conspirator, Warrior and Phoenix Queen: basically "Henrietta Maria: For the Defense!", a spirited new biography of one of the most unpopular English Queens. It's well written, presents its assumptions with source quotes and does a great job with establishing context and bringing not just its titular character but also the people around her to life. This holds especially true for Henrietta Maria's sisters, Christine of Savoy and Elisabeth/Isabel of Spain, both of whom are very interesting in their own right and make for a great compare and contrast to her. (Meanwhile, brother Louis XIII - that's the one from the Three Musketeers - remains a bit vague, but being overshadowed by his First Minister Richelieu has been his lot since his life time.) By quoting from letters between the sisters, Leanda de Lisle also shows they remained in contact throughout their turbulent lives. Henrietta Maria was the youngest (literally a baby when their father, Henri IV, was assassinated), and how her sisters fared in their marriages and adopted countries of course informed her own behaviour. Both Christine and Elisabeth were distrusted and resented at first, but then became popular - Christine especially was impressive in that Richelieu, like many a head of government before and after him, assumed she'd basically the representative of French interests in Savoy, whereas Christine, to Richelieu's great displeasure, played the bad cards she was dealt (Savoy wasn't a huge and powerful Kingdom like France, Spain or England, but it was strategically very iimportant for everyone's plans in the Europe of the Thirty Years War) exceedingly well and kept the Duchy independent for her son to rule. Of course, Christine and Elisabeth shared the religion of the majority in their adopted countries - and Henrietta Maria did not. Which meant the initial standard xenophobic distrust never went away, as in her sisters' cases, but multiplied.

In terms of establishing context, Leanda de Lisle also does a great job in pointing out that Catholics in England (and Scotland, and good lord, Ireland) were relentlessly persecuted, both by the government(s) - and here, far from doing better under Charles I, they at first did worse than under James, denying the claim that Henrietta Maria made Charles pro Catholics - and by a very vocal part of the Protestant population, who basically was convinced every Catholic was secretly planning a second Bartholomew's Night massacre and acted accordingly. 15 years old Henriettta Maria when sent to England as a bride was very much expected to help her co-religionists to at least toleration status and was told as much by the papal legate. She tried. It didn't help the initial tense state of her marriage or how she was perceived by the Brits. A classic early situation is teen Henrietta Maria passing Tyburn, where Catholics priests had been executed, and praying, essentially treating the spot as a place of martyrdom, while for the Protestant Brits these had been dirty traitors getting their just deserts and they thought her honouring their memory was outrageous. New to England teen Henrietta Maria also said, when asked about whether she could live with and love Protestants, "why not? My father was one!", which is a far cry from the Catholic fanatic secretly plotting to bring the Inquisition to England her enemies portrayed her at. All this said, I think while Leanda de Lisle makes a good case for young Henrietta Maria being earnestly driven to achieve toleration, not dominance, she's letting middle aged Henrietta Maria off too easily for her behaviour re: religion vis a vis both her youngest and her oldest son, more about this later.

Henrietta Maria and Charles I pretty much were the real life version of the "arranged marriage after initial obstacles and mutual misunderstandings becomes true love match" trope, which paradoxically was both great for more than a decade of personal happiness and bad for her ever darkening reputation. Because one of the obstacles to marital bliss had been the favourite Charles had inherited from his father, the Duke of Buckingham. (Not in the sense of also romancing Buckingham, but Buckingham was whom he was emotionally closest to.) When Buckingham was killed, there was, as Leanda de Lisle wryly observed, only one part of his many, many offices, riches, and standing his enemies did not covet - and that was Buckingham playing the role of Evil Advisor (tm) in the public perception. It's the classic get out both for a monarchically minded population - of course you don't blame the King, you're not against the King, it's just the Evil Advisor responsible for anything wrong, not the King - and for the monarch (who if and when making concessions to appease disgruntled nobles and/or commons can always throw said advisor under the bus. Charles I. had already shown himself stubborn re: that last part re: Buckingham (i.e. he defended him at every turn), but as long as Buckingham was still alive, he still made for a good scapegoat in the public perception. Once Buckingham was dead, the role of Evil Advisor (tm) went to... Henrietta Maria, whose increasing closeness to the King was very noticeable. Plus Charles did not have any mistresses to play the role instead. As a result, Henrietta Maria in addition to all the distrust she already got for being Catholic now got all the hostlity Buckingham used to get. In terms of how much political influence she actually had: Leanda de Lisle, who also wrote a biography about Charles I, shows that while he took her advice more into account in those later years, he still disagreed with her a lot, too. Some of his most disastrous decisions in the long term, like trying to impose the "Arminian" (= Anglican Catholicism, basically) style championed by his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, on England and Scotland had nothing to do with her (and didn't come with much improvement for Roman Catholics, though there was a bit - though they still had to pay heavy fines for going to mass; quarelling with his parliament Charles definitely could not do without that money). (Speaking of Scotland, de Lisle points out that the only Scots Henrietta Maria knew personally were the few Catholic Scottish Lords at court in Westminster, which was bound to give her a distorted impression as what Scotland was like, where Catholics by then were only one percent of the population or thereabouts. Her urging son Charles to make a deal with the Scots decades later partly came from this very wrong idea that the country was full of Royalist Catholics burning to rally to the Stuart cause.)

One attractive quality Henrietta Maria had was that she was a loyal friend (and patron, and relation) to have. As mentioned, she hadn't gotten along well with Buckingham, but apparantly his sister, Susan Denbigh, whom he'd placed at her side as a lady-in-waiting (as he'd done with a probable mistress, Lucy Hay, the legendary Countess of Carlisle who's switch sides three times in the Civil War), must have behaved well towards Henrietta Maria during the Buckingham years, because far from dismissing her post Buckingham's death, Henrietta Maria kept her (and the other Villiers ladies, including Buckingham's widow) in her service (and not to humiliate them, either, but as prefered courtiers). And when her mother, Maria de' Mediici, who'd lost her power struggle with Richelieu and had been touring the continent in exile ever since, chose the worst possible time to visit Britain (i.e. around the time of Wentworth's execution, when everyone was on powder kegs already, and receiving the French Queen Mother, seen as an embodiment of the Counter Reformation, really REALLY REALLY did not help), she stll did her best to make her welcome. (Maria de' Medici eventually had to leave because Charles I. could no longer guarantee her personal safety.) This quality explains conversely while the few courtiers who followed her into exile remained loyal to her through thick and thin when there was nothing to gain and everything to lose by staying around her. And she was both a good organizer and full of personal courage, with the most obvious example being her organizing guns and another army for her husband during her first trip to the continent (the Protestant Netherlands being her first call, not yet France) and bringing them with her when making it back to England. Another example are the circumstances of her last pregnancy which resulted from he reunion with husband Charles during that occasion. Henrietta Maria was very aware that if she was captured by the Parliamentarian army, she would make either a powerful hostage or might not survive. So she gave birth at Exeter (to Henriette Anne, aka Minette), heard the army under the command of the Earl of Essex (yes, that one, Frances Howard's first husband) were fastly approaching, left newborn baby Miinette in the care of a lady-in-waiting (as a baby could not make a fast escape ride) and basicaly made her successfull escape (to France, this time) directly after having birth. (That it was necessary, from her pov, is shown by Essex - never one to avoid the chance of showing himself as a jerk towards a woman - having sent a message to her saying he'd happily escort her back to London for the sake of her health as the air was better there.) (Baby Minette would be smuggled out of England by said lady in waiting two years later.)

Now for the criticism: it's basically what makes the book compelling, too, that it is unabashedly partisan in its defense of its titular heroine. More often than not, this works for me, and for example, I don't begrudge de Lisle showing Richelieu mainly in his capacity as feuding with Maria de' Medici, and then her daughters, as this is how he impacted Henrietta Maria's life, and not getting in depth into his policies aside from this. But basically spending only spending a paraphrase of Tallyrand's "worse than a crime, a mistake" re: the punishment of several anti Laud, anti Armenian Puritans by Charles I made me say "hang on...". Showing how bad Catholicis had it in England: fair and important, and often neglected in traditional accounts of the Civil War. Not spending much narrative time on all the genuine issues Parliament had with Charles I., otoh, results in Team Roundheads coming across as mostly motivated by hysteria, which is as unfair as painting Henrietta Maria as The Evil Catholic Queen Planning A Takeover Through Her Weak Husband. And then there's Leanda de Lisle defending one of Henrietta Maria's decisions from her exile years that's most often held against her, to wit, her relentless attempt to convert her youngest son, Henry (once he'd been finally released by Parliament and joined his family in continental exile), to Catholicism, and her basically kicking ihm out when he refused and her oldest son, not really yet Charles II, also told her that converting his brothers to Catholicism was a no go. (Since it fed direclty into the Roundheads narrative of the Stuarts as a bunch of hidden Catholicis anyway and if he, Charles, was ever to make it back to the throne, then as a Protestant.) Leanda de Lisle argues that from Henrietta Maria's pov, becoming a Catholic would have heightened Henry's chances on the mostly Catholic continent, allowing for marriages to rich Catholic princesses, and for Charles (not yet II) to become a Catholic as well would have granted him in adddition to a rich Catholic bride access to in-laws with armies. I don't doubt these reasons were part of her thinking. (Sidenote re: the realism of such a prospect: the French had their own internal Civil War, the Fronde, and once that was done Mazarin - who was like his mentor Richelieu a pragmatist, and had made a deal with Cromwell's Commonwealth - and later a young Louis XIV this early on in his own reign would not have spend the amount of money and men that would have been necessary to put a Catholic Cousin Charles on the throne. Decades later, maybe, but not with the Fronde and the memory of his own nobles fighting against him just a few years ago. As for the Spanish, they also were exhausted by war - with the fellow Catholic French, incidentally - , and contrary to English imagination had no desire to organize another Armada.) But to pressure young Henry - who had seen his father shortly before Charles I.'s execution and had explicitly promised to Charles I he'd stay true to the Church of England and would obey his mother in all things BUT matters of religion - and to react so very badly to his refusal strikes me as being motivated not by any practical concern for his future but by the by then hardcore religious conviction in middle aged Henrietta Maria, the idea that she had to save his soul. She wasn't the teenager ready to refer to her own father as a Protestant (despite his famous "Paris is worth a mass" conversion) anymore, the intervening decades had made her faith one of the few things she could rely on to keep her going. By ascribing practical motives to Henrietta Maria instead of religious ones, I think our author is very aware that current day readers tend to be put off by any kind of religious conversion zeal, and this entire book is meant to defend its subjects and make the readers like her. Which I think would still have been possible while granting Henrietta Maria a few genuine mistakes born out of less than sympathetic to a contemporary of ours but very much part of her era motivation.

(One last note on authorial defensiveness for HM - when quoting the passage from Sophia of Hannover's memoirs where young Sophie, age 12, describes being put off by seeing her aunt for the first time in rl becuase van Dyck made her look so beautiful and here she was, with teeth like cannons out of a fortress and too long arms for too small a figure, Leanda de Lisle is pointing out this is exhausted and traumatized Henrietta Maria mid Civil War and this is cold and heartless. Having read the entire memoirs, Sophie makes fun of her own and her siblings' looks as well, and also she's not writing for publication, she's writing what she recalls of her own impression as a child, and that kind of narrative honesty is what makes her memoirs so vividly entertaining to read.)

All in all: a good biography of its main subject. But if you want a non-royalist perspective on the Civil War, you need to look elsewhere.



Margaret Irwin: Royal Flush: this, on the other hand, is not a new but a very old book, from the 1930s, which kathyh after beta reading my Minette story for Candyhearts told me about. An audio version on Audible was available. It turned out to be a very entertaining historical novel, dated in some parts (not just because research marches on, but so do attitudes), but still a good read, and also full of shades of grey. I'm not sure I'd call it a biographical novel about Henriette Anne/Minette exactly, though her life is certainly the read thread holding it together (it starts with her as a small child in France and ends with her death), because the focus isn't always on her, and by "not always" I mean considerable parts of the novel focus on other characters from their pov. I don't mean that as a crticisim, just not to set up wrong expectations. What I'd call this novel is an ensemble story about the Bourbon and the Stuart family in Minette's life time, with some sections where she's the pov character, or very prominent, and others where she isn't; listening to the book, I thought that the Grande Mademoiselle (Minette's cousin, daughter of Gaston D'Orleans) probably gets as much pov time as Minette, say, and Henrietta Maria and Louis XIV only slightly less, and then Charles II. (Philippe D'Orleans aka Monsieur, Minette's husband, never gets a pov but he is very present in the book, obviously.) Irwin is a very good writer who gives shades of grey to everyone, which also ensures three dimensionality for her characters. And she has fun even with the ones that briefly show up, like Louise, oldest daughter of Elizabeth Stuart the Winter Queen (and another of Minette's cousins), or that tireless schemer Gaston d'Orleans, and brings them all too life. As for Minette herself, it's not quite how I see her, but it's certainly a plausible and sympathetic portrait.

The actress reading the book does a good job, both with the always faintly ironic narrative voice and for the character voices, except for one thing which touches on a pet peeve of mine, and I'm not sure anyone but me would mind, escpecially in an audio format where it's useful to signal which character is from where. But: all the French characters (except Minette) speak in French accents. Given that except for conversations involving Charles II and his brothers, every single character in this novel actually talks in French to each other, I don't see the point. (Except to signal to the listener who is French and who is not, but like I said: letting Minette, who grows up in France and while speaking English does so in a second language way, not have a French accent is inconsistent then.)

But as I said: the whole "accents when no one in rl speaks in English anyway and we just read/hear it because that's the language the book is written in/the film is shot in" is a personal pet peeve, and probably no one else would mind.

I had osmosed enough good word of mouth about this one to try it. Although I have to say I am glad not to have heard the publisher's pitch - "Mulan meets Song of Achilles" - because that would have put me off, seeing as I couldn't stand Song of Achilles, and that would have been a shame, because I really did like this novel.

It is set during the waning days of the Yuan dynasty, the Mongol rule of China, and thus in the rise of the not yet called that Ming dynasty, and never tells us our heroine's orignal name, for different reasons than the lack of a name for the narrator of Rebecca. The central character in She Who Became The Sun, starting out as a girl in a famine stricken village, picks her (soon dead) brother's name and destiny in the opening chapter. (This is said at the back of the book so doesn't count as a spoiler.) Who she is and who she makes herself into is an ongoing challenge and theme of the book, along with destiny-by-choice. Not for nothing is her primary antagonist and foil a Eunuch, who unlike her did not choose his between the genders fate - but like her actively pursues the destiny he claims to be ruled by. Our heroine's name for the majority of the novel is Zhu, but after an exclusive focus on her for the first quarter or so the novel branches out to introduce other characters - the Eunuch, Ouyang, who fights for the Mongols who wiped out his birth family, the girl Ma, who starts out married to one of the leading rebels, and Esen, Ouyang's immediate superior chiefly among them, and all are interesting and vividly described. Ahead of reading the book, I was wondering how the author would handle the fact that the Yuan dynasty at this late stage was nothing to write home about - there would be fascinating Mongol leaders again, but only after they had lost China -, because obviously you need impressive antagonists if you want your hero(ine) to look even more impressive for defeating them. Cleverly, this is accomplished in a variety of ways - firstly, Zhu has famine and the patriarchy of her own society to overcome, then the strict hierarchy of the Buddhist monastery where she-as-her-brother seeks shelter in order not to starve, and even once she's with the army, she's in an outsider position (as a monk). Secondly, as mentioned, her main foil in the novel isn't one of the Yuan princes but Ouyang, who, like her, has his own secrets and agenda.

The novel provides plots within plots and also great character development all around. Zhu is initially driven by not just the basic desire to survive but also to matter, to not be nothing; it's not like she starts out with a Master Plan to accomplish what she has accomplished by the time. What she wants changes through the book. As does what she's willing to do for it. And the novel doesn't shy away from the fact it won't just be unsympathetic bad guys standing in our heroine's way. Nor does it pull the "evil advisor" card, i.e. puts the blame on another character. By the time the novel ends, Zhu has done something that solidly puts her into solidly into, hm, let's say Caprica Six territory and leave at that BSG allusion.

It's also a novel that fully embraces its genderqueer premise. The two main romantic relationships of the book, one explicit, the other unspoken but very there, are same sex in nature. And it doesn't forget not every powerful emotional relationship has to be sexual - there are also both compelling friendships and enmities.

Lastly: it's classified as historical fantasy by the publisher. The "fantasy" part essentially consists on the "Mandate of Heaven" which the Yuan are about to lose and several possible candidates for future Emperor are able to produce being a literal flame they can psychically ignite - that, and their ability to see ghosts. But that's it; the wars are fought by rl means, no dragons are flying around, and natural castrophes as well as famine can't be solved with fantastical elements, either. All in all, I would call it a historical novel going for a mythic aura myself.

Like a great many bookish kids of my generation and older, I first encountered the Greek myths - the Trojan War ones included - via a 19th century rendition and bowlderization, by Gustav Schwab. His big collection of Greek and Roman myths was THE standard present for almost a century. Nine years old me was spell bound and didn't notice the bowlderization until as a teenager I read some of Ovid's Metamorphoses in Latin in school, and some of the great theatre plays - Aischylos, Sophocles, Euripides - in German. I don't think I tackled the non-Gustav Schwab Iliad and the Oddyssey until I was in my later twenties, and then it was a nineteeth century translation, too, because as opposed to the Americans and the Brits, for some reason German scholars don't seem to have produced 20th or 21st century translations of Homer. (Retellings, yes. Fictionalisations, yes. Not translations. When I think of the big translation events being celebrated in the last decades, it's inevitably Shakespeare - seriously, you get a new Shakespeare in German pratically every decade, if not more -, and also the 1001 Nights stories (here the particular celebration was around the fact it was a translation not based on the famous French collection but directly on the Arabian tales.) Now I might be wrong here, and missing out on newer German translations, but googling doesn't give me that impression. Whereas in English, the Homer translation business is alive and thriving. What gives, German scholars?

Anyway, having heard much praise of Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, I listened to Claire Dane's rendition of it on Audible, and with the caveat that much to my Latin teachers' frustration, I chose not to learn Greek at school but French and hence am incapable of judging the "translation" part of it myself, I found the praise well deserved. It's a a text fascinating to listen to - including Wilson's introduction, which already is over an hour of listening time, but by no means missable - , and Wilson's decision to use English iambic pentameter makes the verse feel flowing and natural in that language. To requote her alraedy often quoted rendition of the proem illustrates this beautifully:
Odyssey


Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.

Not speaking Greek, I can't judge the accuracy of "a complicated man" versus the "man of twists and turns" of Fagles and the "contending man" of another translation, but purely as a reader/listener, it does strike me a as a good choice to set up the ambiguity of Odysseus right from the start. Similarly, "he failed to keep them safe" versus the "he lost them" I'm more used to from other versions heightens Odysseus' share of responsibility for the loss of his men.

Now, when you, like I, was introduced to the stories comprised in the Odyssey via the 19th century guy Gustav Schwab, who restructed the entire story to a linear fashion and focuses on the sea adventures (as opposed to Homer, who starts when Odysseus' wandering years are nearly over, doesn't put him on stage, so to speak, until a third of the story has passed because the beginning of the epic tells with Telemachus on Ithaca and his quest to find out what happened to his father via visiting Nestor and Menelaus first, and devotes far more page time on Oysseus on Ithaca - i.e. the Quentin Tarantino-esque revenge tale part of the story - than on the sefaring aadventures), that difference in focus and pacing is what inevitably strikes you first. But also all the differences threethousand years make and doesn't make in behavioral codes. Men in the Odyssey cry often and easy. Odysseus and Telemachus most of all, but also the other heroes. There is nothing to indicate this expression of emotion is coded as feminine. Otoh, Odysseus in his rendition of his adventures for his hosts mentions how he and his men directly after leaving Troy and before getting into the first big adventure sacked another city en route, "sharing" all the women and taking all the loot. As you do. This is not in any way seen as bad or unheroic behaviour. As opposed to the suitors' freeloading Listening to the epic instead of reading it and thus unable to skip anything really hammers home the whole idea of sacred hospitality (and being a good guest) as a central value. (Wilson in her introduction points out the epic's setting predates the use of money. Finding a good host on your travels who feasts you, clothes you and ressupplies you is quintessential for any traveller. But abusing this is therefore extra taboo.) And good lord, but the death of Agamemnon is evoked much, much more often than I recalled. (Schwab & Co. must have cut down the Agamemnon references to the bare minimum, because I could remember them only obviously in the underworld visit when the man himself shows up and in Sparta when Menelaos brings up his brother.) It's the constantly upheld fear that this is how Odysseus' return could go, one of the reasons for his disguises and drawn out undercoverness when finally at Ithaca. It's also intriguing to me that the Odyssey, created ca. 800 BC or thereabouts, has Aegisthos as the main instigator and actor in Agamemnon's death, and Clytaimnestra only as his seduced sidekick - she's even presented as at first having hold out against his attempts to seduce her before falling for him. Meanwhile, all the dramatists tackling the House of Atreus some centuries later make Clytaimnestra the main actor and Aegisthos (if he shows up in person at all) her sidekick, and also give her the death of Iphigenia as a key motive (as opposed to simply having fallen for Cousin Aegisthos). Now, dead Agamenon is still bitter about his wife - going as far as to tell Odysseus not to trust any woman, even if Penelope should prove faithful - because of this -, but everyone else evoking this death singles out Aegisthos as the chief villain and barely or not at all mentions Clytaimnestra.

Wilson in her introduction explains that she chose to use the term "slave" for the various more exact (as to their position in the household) signfiers for the various servants instead of the traditional "maid/handmaiden/nurse/steward/sevant" etc. because to a modern reader/listener, the later would imply these people actually get paid for their services and are free. As opposed to be being enslaved. This, btw, had gone right by 9 years old me when I first encountered the story in its bowlederized version; teenage me did realize that Greek household servants in myths were not paid for their labour, but I think I wasn't aware that, say, the swineherd Eumeious was also Odysseus' property as opposed to someone who saw him as his liege lord. For current readers, yes, I magine many if encountering the story for the first time would not consider someone called a maid or a servant to be a slave by necessity, too.

(Of course, one difference between ancient world slavery and US 19th century type of slavery would be that the former wasn't racially connotated and just about anyone could become a slave if their city got sacked (see Trojan women). This does not make a slave less of a slave.)

(Listening, I found it very interesting that the epic has Eurycleia, Odsseus' old nurse, mention Laertes (Odysseus' father) never touched her out of respect for his wife, and later that Penelope ensured Telemachus never put a hand on her maids. These are not addendums by Emily Wilson - I have a prose translation by T.E. Lawrence (yes, that Lawrence) to compare, and it's there as well - and it's an intriguing glimpse as to what was considered "good" behaviour. Given raping women while sacking cities is fine, I think the laudable behaviour here isn't that the female slaves don't get raped by Laertes and Telemachus, respectively, it's that Laertes respects his wife and knows this would be against her wishes, and Telemachus his mother, and/or that Penelope's servants are the absent Odysseus' property, and therefore it would not have been appropriate for his son to have a go.)

Peneleope's female servants being slaves is a point alluded to again in the passage that to my recollection has only gotten fictional attention in the last fifteen years or so (thanks to Margaret Atwood's Penelopeiad), and Wilson in her introduction also singles it out as something which many a previous translator has sawn fit to add additional sexism to, to wit: after the suitors are killed, Odysseus asks his former nurse which of the female slaves have been loyal and which have betrayed him. Eurycleia says out of the fifty women, only twelve were - and here is where the translations vary: having sex/consorting/ other verb with the suitors. Odsseus orders her to get these twelve, who are then made to clean up and help disposing of the bodies of the suitors; then Odysseus tells Telemachus to kill them via sword, but Telemachus, showing initiative without Athena prompting him for the first time in the epic, decides death by sword is too good for them and hangs all twelve. Wilson points out that a great many earlier translations have him refer to them as "sluts" or "whores", which he doesn't in the Greek original. After hearing her stark and visceral version:

[S]o the girls, their heads all in a row,
were strung up with the noose around their necks
to make their death an agony. They gasped,
feet twitching for a while, but not for long.

I checked the Lawrence translation and was glad to find good old Lawrence of Arabia also avoids said additional sexism. Same passage in prose, no lest ghastly as to what it describes:

Exactly thus were the women's heads all held a-row with a bight of cord drawn round each throat, to suffer their caitiff's death. A little while they twittered with their feet - only a little. It was not long.

Now the epic, in Wilson's translation as well as in any other, has used a great deal of narrative space to make the suitors obnoxious in their behavior to just about everyone, not to mention that they also earlier have a scheme to waylay and kill Telemachus en route back from Sparta to Ithaca. Their deaths thus work not dissimilar from the recent shows and movies featuring evil and often also stupid rich people who are then narratively punished after first having put the sympathetic characters through hell. But a current day audience is aware that the twelve women, being slaves, would not have had much of a choice, and at any rate only one of them has previously been given a name and a narrative opportunity to behave disdainfully to a still disguised Odysseus. Their deaths thus feel horrendously unearned and cruel. I did remember them, though, which is more than I can say of the death of the one male slave who had previously been shown throwing in his lot with the suitors and behaving aggressively and mockingly towards the Odysseus-loyal Eumeios the swineherd and towards the cattle driver. These two have a go at Melanthius unprompted by any orders, slice his nose and ears and hack off his genitals which are then fed to the dogs. (Not poor Argos the first loyal dog of world literature, he's already dead.) The Odssey: a Tarantino-esque splatterfest, like I said. (As opposed to the "maids" being hanged, I don't think this bit made it into the toned down versions.)

At the same time, I wouldn't say this is a grimdark story in its original form, and not just because there's a surprising amount of humor in it. (See also: Calypso, after Hermes has given her the order from Zeus to let Odysseus go early on in the epic, being annoyed at the double standard and listing all the cases where the male gods very much did not let go of their female mortals, for example. Or Nestor's tendency to ramble being narratively made fun of. Or Athena's plain delight in finding Odysseus, when he meets her in disguise, being so inventive in his lying.) There are plenty of examples for generous, good hospitality, hosts and courteous guests as well. Odysseus' reunion with his dead mother during his visit in the underworld, from his realisation that she's dead - she was still alive when he left Ithaca - to his conversation with her - is a very human moment, as his his willingness to go back to Circe' island just to bury the unfortunate Elpnor who died by accident when they previously departed. For all that she's described as holding him with her against his will, Calypso isn't made into a caricature and gets some of the most poetic passages. And there's the remarkable moment when Achilles, the previous epic's epitome of the warrior who chooses glory and a short life over a long life in mediocrity, tells Odysseus he'd rather be a long lived farmer on earth than the most admired hero in the underworld. (Which reminds me, I see Emily Wilson has now translated the Iliad as well, and I do want to check this out, too - again I think in audio form, because as pretentious as this sounds, there's an extra dimension to being able to listen to something that at first was created in oral form.) And in the final reunion of Odysseus with Penelope. Later fictionalisations have her recognizing him far earlier. The text is ambiguous enough to allow for that interpretation, since we're not told exactly what Penelope is thinking, but it's just as possible to take it at face value, that her test of him - evoking their marriage bed, whose nature (carved out of a living olive tree) only Odysseus will know - is just that, a test, which he has to pass before she accepts him as her husband. Odysseus and Penelope are the people whose cleverness the epic most often extolls, and that reunion scene does feel like they are evenly matched and suited to each other, culminating in this passage:


Finally, at last,
with joy the husband and wife arrived
back in the rites of their old marriage bed (…..)
And when
the couple had enjoyed their lovemaking,
they shared another pleasure — telling stories.


It's the last line that does it, and brings everything full circle, though the epic continues beyond this; the fathers of the suitors blaming Odysseus for not only the deaths of their sons but for taking an entire generation of men from Ithaca if you add those who died at Troy and en route home is solved by a l iteral dea ex machina, Athena making peace so there is no civil war on Ithaca. Not for the first time, my modern sensibilities wish the epic would have ended with the Odysseus and Penelope scene, but then again, allowing the people of Ithaca being not universally thrilled their lord is back but upset at all the deaths is acknwowledging that for all their obnoxious fratboyness, the suitors were human beings. (So were the twelve hanged women, of course, but nobody is set to fight for them or doubts Odysseus' right to dispense with them as he pleased.)

Really, though, the power of storytelling is something that works in this epic on both a Doylist and Watsonian level. Both when bards do it and when Odysseus spins one of his many invented or true (or are they?) stories about himself. And in the power the Odyssey still holds, after threethousand years. And that's why I think it's eminently fitting for "telling stories" being named as a joy on a lovel with lovemaking.