A Thousand Ships Hardcover – May 2, 2019

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes tells the story of the Odyssey from a female perspective. Ms. Haynes is an award-winning journalist, writer and comedian.My daughter bought this book and was kind enough to let me read it. It sat for a few months on my desk until I finally decided to read – and I’m glad I did.One of the first things I noticed about A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes is the great sense of humor, the other is the number of characters involved. I have no idea how many there are, but there are a lot and it’s a true testament to the author’s skill that they don’t all get lost in the narrative.The book acknowledges the suffering of the women during the Trojan War. From the petty goddesses to the Amazon Penthesilea dying at the hands of Achilles. We are with the Trojan mothers who witness the fall of their city, as well as the deaths of their husbands and sons. We are privy to Penelope’s thoughts while waiting for two decades for her husband, Ulysses, to come back.I have to admit that I read this book with some skepticism, but I was happy to find out that the author did not need to make the men look weak or incompetent in order to make the women look strong. Quite the opposite, the women in this book are just as strong, majestic, and interesting as their male counterparts who had thousands of years to enter our consciousness. As Calliope reminded us at the end: “I have picked up the old stories and I have shaken them until the hidden women appear in plain sight.”The women are capable of just as much revenge and violence as the males, as proven by Clytemnestra, they are just as cunning and honorable – many much more. Even though I enjoyed the concept, toward the end I was just reading it to finish, as the story is too broad, but still very enjoyable, regardless if you read the Odyssey or not.

I received a book that was scuffed up and had the price cut out of it. I thought I was purchasing a new copy of the book so I’m slightly dissatisfied with the condition. If it had just been labelled as a Good Condition Used Copy I doubt I would have cared.

I really enjoyed this take on the Trojan war, focusing on the untold, or barely told stories of the women involved in the war. It was reach with emotion, bright with well written characters, and fresh, something that’s hard to do to Greek mythology in a way that doesn’t seem redundant to what is already out there.

I wanted to love this, because I love these types of stories that tell a retelling or a different point of view of Homers epic of The Iliad and The Odyssey, such as Madeline Miller’s, Circe and The Song of Achilles as well as Daniel Kelly’s, Fall of the Phoenix and A Hero’s Welcome. This however, takes a different approach, by telling the story through Calliope, the Greek muse of heroic poetry as she inspires Homer to tell additional tales of goddesses, amazons, Greek and Trojan women during the Trojan war.The thing I love the most, is that this isn’t a complete retelling, as it still keeps true to The Iliad and The Odyssey, while getting to see a different view of the Trojan war and how it affected the wives or lovers of some of the most famous men of the epic. This is definitely a breath of fresh air into one of the most famous stories ever written, because they deserved to have a story of their own as well.“When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else.”It tells the stories of some 20 different women, some get a single chapter and not a lot of depth, others get multiple and a far deeper story. All the stories were good and well written, but most of the smaller stories felt a bit unnecessary other than to say they got a voice in the novel. Those stories just didn’t give enough time to develop any kind of feeling towards the character so when their story was over, it was just, an “ok… on to the next” type of feeling. The author had a bunch of great ideas, but this could have been a lot longer and each of the parts expanded upon and given more time to grow, and I probably would’ve loved this a lot more.I also had a small issue with the authors narration, for most of the novel, it felt like she didn’t give any kind of emotion. She did a great job of differentiating her voices for the characters involved, but it just felt like something was missing from the performance. With that said, it was a great set of stories that the author created, so I would definitely recommend this as a read only over doing the audio or Whispersync.

Haynes has, to quote her Calliope: “...picked up the old stories and I have shaken them until the hidden women appear in plain sight."This is a great read. It helped (me, anyway) that from other ancillary reading I’m beginning to get a handle on the Iliad and the Odyssey. Putting women firmly at the centre of everything (and men at the periphery), Haynes really fleshes out the female characters, giving them an inner life and drive if not agency and autonomy.Her Trojan women stoically face their destinies, though their distress is well-written (especially the Andromache chapters), Penelope provides with mounting impatience a dryly humorous third-hand retelling of Odysseus’s adventures, and the goddesses are shown up for their petty jealousies and behaviour.I enjoyed every page, every chapter, and appreciated the non-linear and multiple focalisation and narrators.Thank you Natalie Haynes. I feel I know you from your books, radio appearances and times I’ve seen you at a British Museum event.Sent from my iPhone

For decades I have loved retellings of ancient myths, starting with Mary Renault's The King Must Die (about Theseus and the Minotaur), and this new book is very definitely one of the best. I'm currently rereading all my novels around the period of the Iliad and the Odyssey after my interest was reignited by reading Pat Barker's The Silence Of The Girls. So this fitted in neatly.I notice I've always searched out unusual perspectives, the story told by one of the lesser characters. A Thousand Ships darts around dozens of the named women involved in the story of the Trojan Wars, interleaving their stories. Natalie Haynes explains how rich her material was in a brief video on Youtube (/watch?v=DKtT_u-wHek).The author is massively well-informed as a classical scholar. Obviously, this is essential to guide us through the stories written by Homer nearly three thousand years ago! But she is also a stand-up performer so she is able to feed excitement and drama, humour and pathos to the reader in an almost relentless stream. Her writing has vitality and immediacy which brings these women to life. Their problems and desires are different to ours but Natalie Haynes makes us understand far more subtly than simply 'explaining'.You may need your wits about you if your knowledge of the Iliad is sketchy (Helen of Troy had a face beautiful enough to launch a thousand ships etc.) but I suggest three ways to get the most out of this hugely enjoyable novel.*** Use the list of characters which the book includes at the beginning*** Find a map of the areas of the Ancient World you'll be visiting, such as one giving birthplaces of people in the Iliad (at the realmofhistory website)*** Listen to the audiobook, read by the author herself, so you know how the various names of people and places should be pronounced!

Congratulations and abundant thanks to Natalie Haynes for writing this estra-ordinary magnificent masterpiece on the retelling of Troy through the experiences of all the women, mortals, goddesses and everything in-between. I was completely caught up in this saga that I have read so much about through many other books, ALWAYS from the point of view of the men. And that is so limiting and prevents great truths from being revealed. But no more. In A Thousand Ships, the reader experiences Troy, what led up to the war, the war itself and all the ensuing consequences in full glory and a depth of truth and understanding never before achieved through all other writers before Ms. Haynes came along.Someone tried to tell the author that you cannot compare the pain and suffering of those who died in a war to those who stayed home because it is much worse to fight the war. What total nonsense! Pain and suffering is not limited by nor less valued because one is fighting or not fighting in a war. Everyone suffers in so many ways, and all experienced suffering is equal in its experience and equal in its need to be told.The reader is given a vast array of women narrators -- Trojan women, Greek women, Goddesses, nymphs, The Furies -- and they ALL have magnificent tales and the deepest insights to share. Men who before were two-dimensional heroes or losers are given a fuller depiction, and the result is dazzling. Men you thought were great heroes were also filled with fear, ego, lust, greed, envy and jealousy and sometimes downright stupidity. Every character in the Trojan War, including the all too-humanlike gods and goddesses are so much more fascinating. The depth of character study in men and women, mortal and immortal is astounding. So much deepest truth of human nature is revealed in this expertly written novel. It deserves every literary prize that is available.Bravo, Natalie Haynes! And thank you for giving humanity this incredible gift of insight, understanding and truth.

I can’t help but compare ... this is the book Silence of the Girls wishes it could be in its wildest dreams. This is a masterpiece in comparison.Read this in one sitting and I loved it! Very cleverly done. I love how unapologetically female centric it is - I mean it is guided by Calliope herself!I liked how we get some the fleshing out of some of the major characters we know like Hecabe and Penelope but also get some obscure characters like Creusa and Laodamia to give some context about less popular aspects of the war.I enjoyed the bits about the goddesses fighting and the engineering of it.Cassandra’s story filled me with horror - that was the worst I think. Clymenstra’s story was a little confusing in the end. It wasn’t fully wrapped up for me or clear what happened/ why she did certain things.All in great book that I can’t recommend enough.

The Trojan war, before, during and after, from the points of view of the many women involved.Someone on Facebook recommended this when I posted how much I liked Pat Barker’s ‘The silence of the girls’. I’d also chanced upon bits of the Radio 4 series ‘Natalie Haynes stands up for the classics’ and she sounds like a fun person, so I was looking forward to this.Hmm. Some of it is good, much of it a bit meh. The best bits are where she dramatises, e.g. Clytemnestra’s revenge on her husband. The dull bits are where one of her characters relates the story in a summary form, e.g. Penelope’s letters to the absent Odysseus, which read more like synopsis than novel.It was a good refresher course in who did what to whom, but rarely gripped me.