Alcestis by Katharine Beutner

Alcestis by Katharine Beutner

In Greek myth, Alcestis is known as the ideal good wife; she loved her husband so much that she died to save his life and was sent to the underworld in his place. In this poetic and vividly-imagined debut, Katharine Beutner gives voice to the woman behind the ideal, bringing to life the world of Mycenaean Greece, a world peopled by capricious gods, where royal women are confined to the palace grounds and passed as possessions from father to husband.

Alcestis tells of a childhood spent with her sisters in the bedchamber where her mother died giving birth to her and of her marriage at the age of fifteen to Admetus, the young king of Pherae, a man she barely knows, who is kind but whose heart belongs to a god. She also tells the part of the story that's never been told: What happened to Alcestis in the three days she spent in the underworld before being rescued by Heracles? In the realm of the dead, Alcestis falls in love with the goddess Persephone and discovers the true horror and beauty of death.

Alcestis is first and foremost a story about a woman stuck in a time that is much too narrow for her. She's far too big and intelligent for the life she was born to, and that makes her an interesting character immediately. She knows what she wants and she goes about practical ways to get it, facing heartache and even death to get what she needs.

The end of this novel left me spellbound. It went far beyond the original myth and made it that much better. Beutner writes the world of Ancient Greece as if she lived there, everything is vivid and real. What helped was knowing how many details were historically accurate in and amongst the mythology. All the tiny facts of daily life were so intricately wound through the prose and gave the reader a true sense of time.

I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, Greek mythology, or stories about women taking charge of their own lives against all odds.