Mantle, 2019, 348 p plus 5 p List of characters, 5p Afterword and 2 p Acknowledgements.

This novel’s title is not particularly apposite – though it does allude to its subject, those Greek tales of the Trojan War – as it barely mentions the legendary ships at all. Instead, its focus is on the women caught up in that conflict and more or less sidelined in all the years since they were first written about. And not simply, like Pat Barker’s Women of Troy sequence, on the Trojan women, but also on the those the Greeks left behind and the Muses and Goddesses said to have influenced affairs.

Thus we have the muse Calliope irritated by the importunings of “the poet” for her to sing for him of the events he wishes to describe (Haynes thereby echoing the usual translation of the Iliad’s opening line, “Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles.”) Creusa, woken by the tumult of the city’s fall, fearing for her five-year-old son and wondering where her husband Aeneas has got to. The captured Trojan women on the shore by the Greek camp, their travails only beginning but intermittently returned to through the narrative. Penthesilea the Amazon, fighting for Troy against the Greeks to atone for being responsible for the death of her sister. Penelope, writing increasingly tetchy letters to her husband Odysseus as his long absence is exacerbated by failure to return promptly on the war’s end and then prolonged on – and on and on – (the poet’s missives suggesting he will use any excuse not to come home.) Chryseis, the daughter of Apollo’s priest, who is befriended by Briseis in shared adversity. The sea-nymph Thetis, mother of Achilles, bemoaning her forced marriage to a mortal and her son’s own mortality. Laodamia begging her husband Protesilaus not to be the first onto the beach at Troy, though she knew he would be. Iphigenia, tricked by her father Agamemnon’s promise of marriage to Achilles into being sacrificed for a favourable wind to set sail for Troy. Aphrodite, Hera and Athene using wiles and false promises to trick Paris into his famous judgement. Oenone, who rescued Paris as a baby after he was abandoned due to the prophecy that he would cause Troy’s downfall. Eris, goddess of strife, setting up the business with the golden apple. Hecabe, Queen of Troy, struggling to accept her new diminished status but still able to revenge at least one of her dead sons. Her daughter Polyxena, accepting her fate with stoic dignity. Cassandra, cursed to see the future as the present and not to have her visions believed. The goddess Gaia resenting the ravages humans wreak on the Earth. Clytemnestra nursing her fury at Iphigenia’s death and preparing her vengeance for it for ten long years. The three Fates spinning the threads of mortals’ lives. Andromache slowly coming to terms with her new life as a slave.

Not a straightforward linear narrative, then, and the many viewpoints and scenes mean the whole thing comes across as fractured and a bit scattershot. This stands in contrast to Haynes’s previous novel The Children of Jocasta which was more tightly focused. The lack of linearity of the storyline works, though, and Haynes clearly has a deep knowledge of her source material.

Her main point, that the sufferings and endurance of the women of these wars (and by extension the women of any war) are as – or even more – heroic than any acts carried out by warriors is certainly worth considering.

Pedant’s corner:- “Odysseus’ nurse” (Odysseus’s,) “Aeneas’ heart” (Aeneas’s,) Briseis’ back” (Briseis’s,) Chryses’ character (Chryses’s,) all names ending in ‘s’ are given s’ rather than s’s for their possessives, “to staunch your bleeding” (stanch,) “each head will open its gaping maw” (stomachs are not usually located on heads,) “‘that Hector deserved to die.’ she said” (‘that Hector deserved to die,’ she said’,) “not known to have expressed regret for any cruelty he had perpetuated against anyone” (he had perpetrated against anyone.)

Mantle, 2017, 344 p, including 1 p Author’s Note, 7 p Afterword and 2 p Acknowledgements.

Greek myth is still a fertile ground for novelists. Both Madeline Miller and Pat Barker have recently revisited the Trojan War from the perspective of hitherto minor characters. This book is Haynes’s take on the three Theban plays of Sophocles (though in her Afterword Haynes tells us each play is in fact a sole survivor of three different trilogies written decades apart) and tells the stories of Jocasta (or Epicaste,) Oedipus and their children.

After the Prologue, set many years before the main narratives during a time of plague known to the characters as the Reckoning, we are given two interleaved viewpoints; a third person account focused on Jocasta and a first person one as written by her youngest daughter, Ismene.

The start of Jocasta’s tragedy is that at fifteen she is made to marry the King, Laius, even though he is ten years older than her father. Laius then proceeds to ignore her (in this account he prefers men) and the necessary heir is provided by his attendant, Oran, but the boy child is taken away at birth with Jocasta told he did not survive by Laius’s maidservant Teresa.

This is where the prophecy of which Laius is so afraid – and on which the whole story depends – (that he will be killed by his son,) for me unravels, since the boy is not Laius’s. I doubt it was Haynes’s intention to undermine the legend and she is free to put whatever spin on it she wishes especially since the sources she is drawing on do not all agree with each other on the details. Nevertheless, it is a noteworthy discrepancy. Then again, and the point is made in the text, Greek oracles were notoriously imprecise. But the prophecy concerned seems much more clear cut.

When Oedipus turns up at Thebes with the news of Laius’s death Haynes makes his part in that much softer and inadvertent than the myth would have it – though it is only his word we have for it – and he is presented throughout as a sympathetic character. And what evolves is also his tragedy as much as Jocasta’s.

Four children later (Polynices, Eteocles and Antigone along with Ismene,) the Reckoning returns and the people of Thebes look for blame, finding it in the thought that Oedipus, coming as he did from the not to be trusted Outlying, the lands beyond Thebes, is indeed the son taken from Jocasta many years before and that their relationship is thereby incestuous. Here Haynes allows the reader room for doubt about Oedipus’s parentage, the question remains open, possible but not proved. Moreover, Jocasta’s subsequent suicide is not shown as an act of guilt but rather one of sacrifice as she recognises signs of plague in herself and wishes not to pass it on to her children.

On her death the kingship passes to her two sons by Oedipus. In Ismene’s account they have been rotating possession of the office yearly. But their uncle Creon, Jocasta’s brother, is a jealous man bent on revenge for one of Jocaata’s actions during the Reckoning and also on achieving the crown for himself. Further tragedy is inevitable.

Haynes evokes the world views and belief systems of the ancient Greeks all but effortlessly. The source material is all an author could wish for by way of inspiration, containing as it does love, jealousy, ambition, betrayal; perennial themes in literature.

Pedant’s corner:- hisown (his own,) facethe (face the,) brotherwould (brother would.) Thecity (The city,) Jocastaand (Jocasta and.) There are more examples of words inexplicably run together like this. Helios’ (Helios’s,) “the scene of my both my brothers’ deaths (omit that first ‘my’,) “staunch my tears” (stanch,) Polynices’ (Polynices’s.) In the Acknowledgements: Oedipus’ (Oedipus’s,) “an audience who doesn’t know” (an audience which doesn’t know,) Sophocles’ (x2, Sophocles’s.)