![]() ![]() ![]() Heywood’s tendency to project modern worldviews and resentments into the past amplified the disconnect between narrative style and characters. I wondered if the intention was to bestow a sense of universality on these two women’s experiences. Because this focus meant the majority of the story was internal monologue of the women’s thoughts and feelings about their experiences, the third person narrative felt jarring, as compared to the intimacy of first person. The book focuses exclusively on Helen and Klytemnestra’s points of view. I believe this novel will find an enthusiastic audience among readers who enjoy modern women’s narratives dressed in ancient Greek costumes. The choices she makes to achieve this approach toward the characters and their experiences are interesting to think about, and her prose is engaging. ![]() Heywood leaves the gods out of the story, other than as vague powers to whom characters refer, in this sense taking a quasi-historical/materialist/psychoanalytic rather than fantasy approach to the Trojan war myth. Dual alternating third person narrators follow the sisters chronologically from childhood through the end of the Trojan war, including their marriages, experiences with childbirth and motherhood, and war years. Daughters of Sparta, which I received from NetGalley for review, purports to tell the stories of Helen and Klytemnestra, daughters of king Tyndareos and queen Leda of Sparta. ![]()
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