In some, she isn’t mentioned as part of the Argonaut legend at all; in others, she is the daughter of the King of Boeotia rather than Arcadia. Review: While nothing has quite reached the high that was “Circe” when we read that for bookclub last year, I’m still feeling fairly positive about Greek retellings as a whole. Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book.

Certainly, retelling a classic myth via a fresh viewpoint requires fresh language created by — and for — the contemporary author’s ear. There are two romances in this story, and I very much appreciated the different ways that Atalanta experienced these relationships. Sue Lynn Tan, Sunday Times bestselling author of DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS A stunning retelling filled with breathtaking adventure, Atalanta brings to life a heroine who stands tall among the ancient gods and heroes of legend. In the case of Atalanta, Princess of Arcadia, Huntress and Warrior, her story seems even more deeply buried, my awareness of her, was a name referenced in the painting Hippomenes and Atalanta by Noël Hallé, housed in the Louvre Museum. But instead, the goddess Artemis takes her under her wing, raising her to become a powerful huntress.

There was nothing sweeter to me in the world than the sound of her delighted laughter when I hit the mark. This really irritated me, but it also suggested to me that there was disagreement in the ancient world as to whether or not she participated in the quest, and in fact there are plenty of mentions of her in other lists of the Argonauts.

When Artemis offers her the chance to fight in her name alongside the Argonauts, the fiercest band of warriors the world has ever seen, Atalanta seizes it. But that language must still sing on the page, which is one of the more consistent strengths of Madeleine Miller’s Circe, for example, to which Saint’s books have been compared. I saw that it pleased her to have a mortal grow up in her image, and I was glad of it, too, even if I didn’t quite understand just how much gratitude I truly owed her.In Ovid, Meleager is glad that Atalanta joins the hunt against the rampaging boar causing havoc in his home town and he respects her contribution to the victory the hunters claim against the boar without begrudging her skill and prowess at all. Recently, classicist and historical novelist Emily Hauser also featured Atalanta’s voice in For the Winner, the second book in that author’s Golden Apple trilogy . Artemis sighed with contentment as the midday sun caught her in its glow, highlighting her upturned face, the curve of her shoulders, and her breasts. Left exposed on a mountainside, the defenceless infant Atalanta, is left to the mercy of a passing mother bear and raised alongside the cubs under the protective eye of the goddess Artemis. Linda’s Book Bag readers should note that they may unsubscribe at any point from following the blog.

As the story progresses Atalanta falls a little out of favour with the Goddess of the Hunt and to try and redeem herself undertakes a quest. But thanks to Jennifer, my lack of knowledge has been repaired and we are taken on a great adventure with the only female Argonaut. I won’t go into all the details of the myth here, but Saint incorporates most of the elements that are often associated with Atalanta: the Calydonian boar hunt, her relationship with the Argonaut Meleager, the footrace and the golden apples.Jennifer Saint grew up reading Greek mythology and was always drawn to the untold stories hidden within the myths. There’s such a visual quality to the writing that it has a cinematic quality I thought was astounding. Representing unalloyed strength and a multi-layered feminism she leaps from the page as a surprisingly realistic person despite being part of a mythological world.

From then, I lived for the days that Artemis would arrive in the grove, when she would beckon me out into the stillness of dawn with the bow in her hand. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.

Bringing these women back into the spotlight is really important to me – their stories allow us to peel back the layers of myths we think we know so well, and to see all the layers and complexity beneath the quests and gods and monsters and battles we’ve enjoyed before! And when we read “The Witch’s Heart” for bookclub, it began to highlight one of the things I was starting to struggle with.