Greek Myths: A New Retelling, with drawings by Chris Ofili

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Higgins describes how, when Penelope must finally complete the shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes – a fabric with “a design as intricate as her own involved, withheld mind” – she folds it up and puts it away. She is an associate member of the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and is on the board of the Henry Barber Trust.

This book was so good in that it retells most (of not all available) Greek myths through the eyes of the women, working the loom, to tell these stories. Each chapter is dedicated to a woman using weaving to tell their own story and stories that they’ve heard. It's a powerful depiction that infuses the myths with creative new artistry and paints the female characters with bolder agency. Occasionally, we hear what pictures they created – Helen at Troy weaves scenes from the very war she is said to have caused – but more often we do not. For the momentous task of creating workable threads from tufts of wool, dyeing them, and labouring at huge looms was the responsibility of women.The myths themselves are extremely easy to read, and while the chapter title may focus on one particular character, the stories follow the characters all the way down their family trees so that you get a much clearer idea of just how interconnected they all are with each other. Her most recent book Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths (Cape, 2018) was BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. And if you really want to explore that genre but you want it tied to modern day examples of bomb ass women embodying ancient myths and you still want it to be feisty and fun, I’M DEAD INSIDE THIS IS STILL NOT THE BOOK.

The dazzling white and blue of Aegean seascapes and the modern Greek flag are decorated with golden sequins, like those with which the women would highlight visual details. At the sight of her, the mob fell back--they were blinded, burned, by the deadly, shimmering heat that came from her. This is supposed to be a ~feminist retelling~ but that is only true because 1) each chapter title is the name of a woman and 2) the author is literally just TELLING you the same Greek stories over again. Higgins does a great job of following Greek myths through many of its famous women, but they are all linked by the loom and their weave depicting some of the terrible things the gods and goddesses have done.This New Noise, a book based on her nine-part series of reports on the BBC, was published by Guardian-Faber in 2015. Unlike in many previous collected myths, female characters take centre stage - Athena, Helen, Circe, Penelope and others weave these stories into elaborate imagined tapestries. Other chapters also incorporate The Odyssey, The Homeric Hymns, Euripides, Sophocles, etc, but these are all interwoven and retold amazingly. Within each weaving/chapter, the stories are many of those familiar to us already, the Trojan War/ Odyssey, Persephone, Arachne and Athena (that one was particularly well written), and some are far more obscure (the rise of Dionysus and his many many side adventures). The book is exactly what it tells itself to be, it's a telling of the Greek Myths, so many that you kind of lose count, and they're all told in a compelling and enthusiastic way, and they're also short.

This is not what he thought he had made, this dishevelled woman with sweat glinting off her clavicle, this woman shrieking like something escaped from Hades, this woman now staggering towards the door and her liberty. I especially loved the portrayal of Medea (my favourite, guys she has dragons AND magic) and Helen, who is given a far more sympathetic treatment than most other versions. She includes deft Homeric epithets (“the deathless goddess”), unobtrusive embedded quotations of resonant couplets from Sophoclean tragedy, and luscious Homeric similes at unexpected moments. There are so many wonderful retellings by women, but as an overarching introduction to all the stories and the way they interact and bounce off each other, this is the one to read. Clearly, we do, because we might think we know these tales so well, but Ms Higgins completely turns them on their head and recounts them from the women’s point of view.I enjoyed the presentation as stories being woven rather than standalone as it helps show the interconnection between all the myths. Inside the palace, Clytemnestra led her husband through to the bath, and, with smooth assurance, helped him strip off his clothes. The book would make a perfect introduction to the entrancing world of Greek myth for any secondary school student.