Book Review

 Ariadne, by Jennifer Saint

• Where I bought this book: The Strand Bookstore, New York
• Why I bought this book: Rewritten myths re-tell a great tale

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    The ancient myths of various cultures is how they remain relevant today. So a good writer can take a myth, view it from another perspective, and give it a meaning for today's world.

    As long as that perspective is within the larger realm of myth, it can fit into the canon and become another way of looking at the world of the gods.

    Such is the case with Ariadne, a new tale about the Greek myth about the mortal life of the woman who is the wife of Dionysus and the sister of the Minataur. 

    For the most part, Saint stays true to the original tale, taking advantage of the differing interpretations by the Greek writers, and adding her own twists to the tale. She reimagines  the ties Ariadne has to well-known gods and mortals, including Daedalus and his son Icarus, and King Minos of Crete.

     Some of those old myths are told in passing, fitted to fit this larger tale of Ariadne. We hear mentions of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and Athena.

    Briefly, Zeus decided to punish Ariadne's mother, Pasiphaë, because he was angry with King Minos, Ariadne's father and Pasiphaë's husband. (A major theme in this feminist take is that the gods often punished woman for the misdeeds of men.) Zeus determined that Pasiphaë would lust after a prized bull that would then impregnate her, and she would give birth to a half-man, half-bull. King Minos would later lock the Minotaur away in the celler, bringing it out for his own purposes.

    Ariadne helps a prince of Athens, Theseus, kill the Minotaur. She had fallen in love with Theseus, who promised to make her the queen of Athens, but he reneged, leaving her to die on the island of Naxos, where she survived, and then met and wed Dionysus.

    All of that is fine, and Saint tells it well. But there is more, and Saint writes perseptively about Ariadne's meeting Dionysus and their falling in love; her desire to reunite with her sister, Phaedra; her life on Naxos, and her dealing with being the wife of a god.

        This is a feminist, women-centered version of the stories, told by Ariadne. It describes the stories and concerns of the women often cast aside in the myth-making of ancient Greece. The book does tend to drag at times, but overall it's a linear tale that's crafted well and does justice to its roots and its women.