Starred Review for Publishers Weekly (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

With exceptional grace and enormous energy, Geras (The Tower Room; <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Pictures of the Night) recreates the saga of the Trojan war from a feminist perspective, by delving into the hearts and minds of the women behind the scenes. The author plunges readers into the thick of the action to become intimately acquainted with both familiar mythological characters and the common folk—around whom this retelling revolves. She focuses primarily on two orphaned sisters: Xanthe, caretaker of Andromache's child and a healer in the "blood room" where the injured men are taken, and Marpessa, Helen's favored assistant who can see the gods. The siblings are devoted to each other until Aphrodite reeks havoc in their lives, causing them to fall in love with the same wounded soldier. Although Xanthe nurses young Alastor back to health, he chooses instead soft-spoken Marpessa to be his lover, despite the fact that his mother has already arranged for him to be married to a girl of higher standing. While jealousy rends the bond between sisters, the fighting outside the city walls continues. Hector, Paris and Achilles play out their dramatic finales while "gossips" (older servants reminiscent of a Greek chorus) recount tales of victory and woe (the infamous "Judgment of Paris," the tale of how Ulysses was drafted into the Trojan War, etc.). Meanwhile, gods and goddesses—Zeus, Hermes, Ares, Athena, Poseidon and Aphrodite—drift in and out of people's lives like fragments of dreams to offer mixed blessings, prophesies and consolation. The effect of this novel is similar to that of a confidently conducted symphony that brings new meaning to a renowned masterpiece: harmonious strains alternate with cacophonous segments to evoke a vast array of moods. Multidimensional images of familiar mythological characters emerge—deities who hold the fates of Trojans in their hands as well as human heroes and heroines who change the course of the war. But Geras focuses most of the attention on the universal experiences of mortals struggling to survive. Mythology buffs will savor the author's ability to embellish stories of old without diminishing their original flavor; the uninitiated will find this a captivating introduction to one of the pivotal events of classic Greek literature. Ages 14-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(May)

ALA Booklist

Geras frames her latest ambitious novel around the Iliad , beginning a decade into the Trojan War. Instead of detailing the battles between gods or men, she imagines the stories of Troy's women, adding new characters to the archetypes in Homer's epic. Orphan sisters Xanthe and Marpessa live in Priam's palace as maids and surrogate daughters to Andromache and Helen, respectively. As the war escalates, pivotal moments from the Iliad 's plot serve as backdrop for Xanthe and Marpessa's coming-of-age: while the familiar men (Paris, Achilles, etc.) slay one another, the sisters fall in love with the same man and care for their grieving households. Readers, particularly those unfamiliar with the Iliad , may struggle initially with the novel's multiple plot threads. But Geras cleverly fills in gaps with the words of visiting Gods and Gossips, as she tells a sexy, sweeping tale, filled with drama, sassy humor, and vividly imagined domestic details that will be accessible to most older teens (and adults), particularly fans of historical romances. Readers may want to follow this with Clemence McLaren's Inside the Walls of Troy (1996) or Wait ing for Odysseus BKL Mr 1 00, both written in women's voices.

Horn Book

Homer's immortal tales of Paris and Helen, Achilles and Hector, and Odysseus and the Trojan horse are recast in the form of a modern novel, using the heroes' fates as background and focus for the real subjects: the women of Troy. As in the epics, love and war are inseparable themes, though here the heroic shares space with the ordinary. Geras handles both her chosen perspective and her subject's grand themes with aplomb.

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-The Trojan War was the original miniseries; trying to cram it into one volume is an epic task. Homer could count on his audience's familiarity with the story. Roger Lancelyn Green, in The Tale of Troy (Puffin, 1995), began deep into the prewar past and narrated chronologically. Geras, like Homer, sets her novel in the last months of the 10-year conflict. She incorporates the back story by an ingenious (but artificial) means: describing tapestries, recounting gossips' chatter or the revelations of visiting gods. (The gods appear and speak, but the mortals are skeptical or forgetful.) There's still a lot to keep straight, and readers will struggle. It doesn't help that the two invented sister characters at the center of the novel are thin, one-dimensional figures: their love for the same man (an equally undeveloped character) is meant to be the focus, but remains at the romance-novel level. The diction ranges from British to slang ("tits," "screw," and "Hera hangs around with Agamemnon"); the absence of specific terms (like amphora or chiton) sacrifices atmosphere for easier reading. The inherent drama of Troy is replaced by the simpler love conflict and its attendant woes (like an unplanned pregnancy). Sometimes Geras's writing is inspired, but Clemence McLaren's Inside the Walls of Troy (Atheneum, 1996) and Paul Fleischman's Dateline: Troy (Candlewick, 1996) are still much better bets.-Patricia Lothrop-Green, St. George's School, Newport, RI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.