Jun 23

Jun 23 A Thousand Ships

Author: Natalie Haynes
Publisher: Mantle (UK)
View on Goodreads

This book won’t be published in the US until January, but you preorder it from my Bookshop above, or you can buy the UK edition from a bookstore called Blackwell’s, which ships to the US for free!

Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective.

This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them…

In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash . . .

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all…

Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.

TL;DR Review

A Thousand Ships is just so good. It’s easy to read and to love, but it also packs a big punch of metaphor and meaning.

For you if: You like greek retellings, especially The Silence of the Girls or The Song of Achilles or Circe.

Full Review

OK, so wow.

This book isn’t published in the US, but it fell on my radar because it’s shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize. Then I heard that it’s a retelling of the Trojan War from the women’s perspectives, and I knew I had to read it ASAP. I ordered a copy from Blackwell’s in the UK, which ships to the US for free, and never looked back.

I loved The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, so I felt pretty sure I was going to love this one. I wasn’t sure how they were going to be too different. But I quickly realized that it’s a question of scope — whereas Barker’s novel is primarily Briseis’s story, A Thousand Ships is dozens of women's stories. It’s a chorus of voices — mortal and goddess, ranging from a Trojan official’s wife; to Hecabe, queen of Troy; to Thetis, Achilles’s immortal mother; to Gaia, the earth herself.

Throughout, short chapters reveal that these stories are being sung by Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, to a poet who hopes to compose the next great epic. She makes it her business to show him that the well-known heroes of the Trojan war are by far the only heroes. That it may be less pleasant to linger on the devastating women’s stories that did indeed exist, that these men did indeed cause — but that’s the point, because those women’s stories are important and no less heroic and worthy of being sung.

“Is Oenone less of a hero than Menalaus? He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans, and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of these is the more heroic act?”

Natalie Haynes writes strong, emotional, echoing voices and characters. Reading this felt like sinking into a sort of home; exactly my kind of book, but one that accomplishes so much. You’ll turn the last page left with such a poignant sense that war and hubris and power leaves no true victors; that men buffet around women just as the gods buffet around men; that these stories are so incredibly linked, these characters intertwined.

I loved contemplating the question of who even caused the Trojan war? Was it Helen, who left her husband? Paris, who wooed her away? Hecabe, who could not kill a baby prophesied to doom them all? Aphrodite? Eris? Themis? Zeus? Gaia? Humans themselves?? Actions lead to reactions and it never ever ends.