Cassandra is yet to be cursed by Apollo, and Paris has not run off with Helen yet, setting the Trojan war in motion. In the next chapter, Cassandra takes the helm, and likewise introduces us to her parents, Priam and Hecabe (aka Hecuba), the king and queen of Troy, and her younger brother Paris who was meant to have been killed as a baby to prevent a prophecy about the fall of Troy coming true, but was brought up by a shepherd. Everyone knew of it, but when the Atreidae, Agamemnon and Menelaus, stood before me and my twin sister in Sparta a lifetime ago, well, the silly stories of infants cooked and served up to their parents seemed to shimmer and crumble like dust motes in sunlight. The history of the family was full of brutal murder, adultery, monstrous ambition and rather more cannibalism than one would expect.

A particularly gruesome one, even by the standards of divine torment. We begin though with Clytemnestra who introduces us to her family: Rather than just use Elektra’s point of view, Saint also uses Clytemnestra and to a slightly lesser extent, Cassandra – the Trojan princess prophetess who was cursed never to be believed. Agamemnon is the brother of Menelaus, born of the line of the cursed House of Atreus, who married half-sisters Clytemnestra and Helen respectively (Helen being born from an egg after Zeus as a swan raped Leda, their mother).Ĭentral to this family’s story is the siege of Troy, and having studied book two of Virgil’s Aeneid for my Latin O-level all those years ago and enjoying this strand of ancient Greek myth and legend ever since, I was looking forward to Saint’s version told by the women. Her primary character this time is Elektra: the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and sister of Iphigenia and Orestes.

She’s back this year with another novel named after an ancient Greek heroine. Last year Jennifer Saint’s first novel Ariadne (reviewed here on its recent paperback release) was a huge bestseller and great fun to read.

The current vogue for feminist retellings of stories from Greek and Roman myths and legends is showing no signs of slowing down and long may it continue.

Elektra jennifer saint paperback