Book Review: "The Last Song of Penelope"
Book Review: "The Last Song of Penelope"
The final volume in Claire North's retelling of the story of Penelope brings the trilogy to a brilliant and achingly beautiful close.
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I’ve been quite enchanted with Claire North’s series of books focusing on Penelope during the years when Odysseus was away from Ithaca fighting at Troy. She’s one of those authors who has the unique ability to capture the flavor and cadence of the ancient myths, and she has repeatedly breathed fresh life into this well-known epic story.Now, at last, the series concludes with The Last Song of Penelope, which brings her extraordinary story to a very satisfying close.
Like the other two volumes in the series, this one is largely told through the point of view of a goddess, in this case Athena, who has appointed herself Odysseus’ special protector. Fortunately, she also feels affection for Penelope and, like her sister goddesses, she does what she can to help the queen come to terms with the return of her husband. For, as anyone who has read Greek myth can tell you, rarely is a homecoming quite the joyous affair that one might expect. There are wounds that are never fully healed, and there are resentments that will take a great deal to overcome.
This is particularly true of Penelope. Throughout this series we’ve watched her do everything in her power to protect herself, her people, and her son Telemachus from the predations of the suitors and their desires to wed her by force and rule Ithaca in her stead. Unfortunately for them, she is as shrewd and canny and crafty as her husband, and she knows how power works. That’s true in The Last Song of Penelope, as well, which is precisely why she doesn’t greet Odysseus’ return with the joy that we might expect. Instead, she is deeply ambivalent, both because there is an anger and a power to him that bursts out in moments of rampant death and destruction (particularly of the suitors) but also because she’s been on her own for 20 years. She doesn’t need a man, and one gets the sense that Athena–herself one of the unwed and unpartnered goddesses–very much appreciates and approves of this stance.
For me, one of the most heartbreaking moments in the entire novel comes when Odysseus, enraged by what he sees as the maids’ complicity in the suitors and their effort to violate the honor of his name and his house, ends up hanging them before Penelope can intervene. Readers of The Odyssey have long noted that this is a moment of terrifying barbarity, and it’s one of those moments that makes us really rethink whether Odysseus is the hero that we’ve been led to think that he is. Even though Athena gives us some insight into his motivations and the deep fears that have marred his mind and distorted his reason, the truth is that we, as readers, have come to know and love these characters. Moreover, we see the tremendous toll that this takes on Penelope and her love for Odysseus, and right up to the end of the novel it remains unclear whether she will ever be able to forgive him or whether this will always be a bone of contention in their marriage.
In The Last Song of Penelope, Odysseus doesn’t get to just ride in and proclaim himself King of Ithaca again without any pushback from the fathers of the suitors whose lives he’s so brutally taken. Most of the second half of the book is taken up with a siege, in which Penelope, Odysseus, Telemachus, and many others are hemmed in by the suitors’ outraged families and the mercenaries they hire. Fortunately for them, Penelope is no fool, and she manages to draw on the wide network of women warriors she cultivated in the earlier novels. There’s something very powerful about the idea that it’s the women of Ithaca who end up being key to his reclamation of his throne, and there’s something equally powerful about the fact that it’s Electra who ultimately rides to Odysseus’ rescue (having been summoned by Penelope in yet another of her forward-thinking moves). Odysseus, and his son, thought that he was going to simply come in and everything would be fine but, as North rightly points out, women are made for more than simply being an ornament to the men in their lives. She might not have the murderous impulses of her cousin Clytemnestra, but there is still far, far more to Penelope than her husband appreciates, at least not until it’s almost too late.
When the novel ends, Penelope and Odysseus have overcome all of the obstacles that have stood in the way of their supposedly joyful reunion save one: they don’t really know one another. When he left to take up his position as a leader of men among the armies sent to Troy, the two had only recently been wed, and she has grown much as a woman since then. However, there is still some home that, as they speak one another’s names, that they’ll be able to bridge that chasm, to find some way of loving one another in which they can find mutual happiness and, perhaps, even joy.
I think that this was my favorite of the three novels in this series. I’ve always found Athena to be one of the most captivating of the ancient Greek deities, and North makes it clear that she has her own vision for the future. Though she might be the goddess of war, she is also the representative of wisdom, which puts her at odds with her fierce and destructive brother Ares. As a result, she yearns to bring a world into being in which bloodshed is not sought for its own sake but is instead for and worth something. That future is still far in the distance, but her desires–which is a recurring motif throughout The Last Song of Penelope–is a potent reminder of the larger stakes of his deeply personal story.
The Last Song of Penelope is a beautiful and crowning achievement to Claire North’s trilogy.