A wonderful, heartbreaking, and truly revitalised retelling of Oedipus Tyrannus focusing on Jocasta and a version of Antigone that takes a myth and grounds it in reality, making it only more magical and emotional.

Truly blown away.
Wonderfully narrated. ( )

Natalie Haynes retells the story of Oedipus from the point of view of his wife and mother Jocasta, and from that of one of his daughters.

Plucked from obscurity and forced into a loveless marriage with King Laius, Jocasta eventually bears a child that is torn away from her at birth due to a prophecy. In her grief she becomes a recluse inside her palace, until a good-looking stranger brings her news that her husband is dead. From that point, the seeds of the tragedy are sown.

Haynes intertwines the story of Jocasta with the story of her children, told by the youngest, Ismene. The inheritors of the family curse, they are also doomed to live in the shadows of further tragedy, which their uncle Creon provokes.

Finally Ismene and her sister Antigone learn the truth of their parents' bitter end.

Haynes' version of Oedipus the King and Antigone is highly readable and suffused with sufficient twists and departures for even those familiar with the Theban plays to be able to enjoy the story anew. ( )

I needed a retelling for a challenge and when I could not get a copy of Song of Achilles, I kept searching the lists of Retelling's and came upon this one-a wonderful find.

This is a retelling of 2 Greek Tragedy's Oedipus and Antigone. The POV comes from Jocasta(wife and mother of Oedipus) and Ismene (Sister of Antigone and Sister and daughter of Oedipus).

Pure Disclosure: I had some knowledge of Oedipus-Never knew the name Jocasta or the names of their children. So you need not know the original stories to enjoy this retelling.

Natalie Haynes is a gifted writer and writes the stories of these 2 women, told decades apart. She pulls you into the world of Thebes, brings all the characters to life. She has made these ancient works fresh and vibrant, and had brought the women from the tales front and center.

For those of you who enjoyed Circe and Silence of The Girls, I highly recommend this one. As I said, a wonderful find!
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This is an interesting attempt to tell the Oedipus story in a very different way. it is told in 2 timelines, by Jocasta and by their youngerst daughter Ismene. There is probably a decade between the latest events of Jocasta's story and that of Ismene.
The things about retellings is that while we know that Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, they didn't know that at the time, so we have a foreshadowing of what is about to come that the story's characters do not. And in that instance, it os how the current telling fits into the framework of what we already know that is the interesting part, what twists does the author put on the known story. It is also worth noting that the story does not stay the same each time it is told, even the Greek tellings end in different ways.
Jocasta starts the story as a shy young girl married off the the King. Isolated in a palace whose workings she knows nothing of, she struggles to find her feet. The depressionw hen her child is born dead (she is told) and removed is all enveloping. And then the King is brought back dead ans she comes into her own, tackling all hurdles with poise and control. And a bit of advance notice never did anyone any harm.
In parallel, we have the children of the marriage, and the fact that they are living under a curse, or is the city cursed? It's hard to separate the two.
There is an author's afterward where she discusses what is present in the earlier tellings and what she has changed to fit a different structural approach. Having purely female voices narrating makes for a very different sense, Oedipus is more of a bit player when he is usually centre stage. The denoument and what happened to both parents is quite startling, even when you already know the outline. it is well done. ( )

I found this book okay. It kind of plods, and I considered DNFing but wanted to see how Haynes handled the ending. The parts about the plague stick out, of course, given our current situation (the portrayal of how they handled lockdown felt accurate), but the characters act very erratically and with weird jumps in logic. Not sure how much of that's Haynes and how much is Sophocles. Guess I need to read the Sophocles to find out. ( )