The Children of Jocasta

by Natalie Haynes

Overview

“[A] dark, elegant novel” of two women in ancient Greece, based on the great tragedies of Sophocles (Publishers Weekly).

Thebes is a city in mourning, still reeling from a devastating plague that invaded every home and left the survivors devastated and fearful. This is the Thebes that Jocasta has known her entire life, a city ruled by a king—her husband-to-be.
Jocasta struggles through this miserable marriage until she is unexpectedly widowed. Now free to choose her next husband, she selects the handsome, youthful Oedipus. When whispers emerge of an unbearable scandal, the very society that once lent Jocasta its support seems determined to destroy her.
Ismene is a girl in mourning, longing for the golden days of her youth, days spent lolling in the courtyard garden, reading and reveling in her parents’ happiness and love. Now she is an orphan and the target of a murder plot, attacked within the very walls of the palace. As the deadly political competition swirls around her, she must uncover the root of the plot—and reveal the truth of the curse that has consumed her family.
The novel is based on Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone, two of Classical Greece’s most compelling tragedies. Told in intersecting narratives, this reimagining of Sophocles’s classic plays brings life and voice to the women who were too often forced to the background of their own stories.

“After two and a half millennia of near silence, Jocasta and Ismene are finally given a chance to speak . . . Haynes’s Thebes is vividly captured. In her excellent new novel, she harnesses the mutability of myth.”—The Guardian

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609454807
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	143,077
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Natalie Haynes is the author of The Amber Fury, which was shortlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year award, and a non-fiction book about Ancient History, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life. She has written and presented two series on BBC Radio 4. In 2015, she was awarded the Classical Association Prize for her work in bringing Classics to a wider audience.

Editorial Reviews

09/24/2018
The legends of Oedipus and his daughter Antigone are told through two interwoven story lines in Haynes’s dark, elegant novel (following The Furies). An urgent, first-person narrative introduces Ismene just as she learns of the murder of her sister, Antigone. Then, a statelier third-person voice introduces Jocasta, as she is giving birth. The narrative flashes back to Jocasta’s reluctant marriage to unappealing King Laius, who’s in desperate need of an heir. Jocasta’s newborn (who will grow to be Oedipus) is whisked away from Jocasta, who’s told that the baby did not survive. Grief over the loss of her child lingers, and Jocasta becomes closer to her brother, Creon, distancing herself from the royal family. Decades later, Laius is killed by Oedipus, who woos Jocasta, despite her age. Ismene’s narrative also flashes back, to her idyllic childhood with siblings Antigone, Eteocles, and Polynices. The first half of the novel is dominated by Jocasta and, after Oedipus’s ascent to the throne, switches primarily to Ismene and her grief when Antigone sacrifices herself to bring an honorable burial to her brothers, war casualties fighting on different sides. The hopefulness of her voice plays evocatively against Jocasta’s more ominous and somber narrative. Haynes’s greatest achievement is imagining a full world surrounding Sophocles’s tragedies, thrusting two minor characters in their respective plays to the forefront and bringing the myths vividly to life. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Children of Jocasta

“[A] dark, elegant novel…Haynes’s greatest achievement is imagining a full world surrounding Sophocles’s tragedies, thrusting two minor characters in their respective plays to the forefront and bringing the myths vividly to life.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This Gordian knot of incest still has the power to shock, and Haynes is deft with it and with its consequences for the next generation. Her grasp of the ancient city-state is marvelously firm. Her sturdy sentences conjure the punishing Greek summer heat that quells movement and the gold rings bunching the fat on the fingers of florid men.“
—Kirkus Reviews

“After two and a half millennia of near silence, Jocasta and Ismene are finally given a chance to speak. Oedipus, Jocasta, and their children are depicted as ordinary men and women grappling with unequivocally sublunary issues.
Haynes’s Thebes is vividly captured. In her excellent new novel, she harnesses the mutability of myth.”
—The Guardian

“The ancient city state comes vividly alive in Haynes’s hands.”
—The Spectator

“A mesmerising work of beauty and brutality.”
—The Australian

“In its physical details, her story is a plausible reconstruction of urban life in a Greek palace-state—complete with obsidian mirrors and wax writingtablets,
dark rooms and sacrificial fires.”
—New Statesman

“Finally in this novel, after so many thousands of years, Jocasta is given her voice.”
—Sydney Review of Books

“This is a novel firmly grounded in the physical world, as its language—sensuous, graphic, and violent—shouts aloud to the reader. The world-building, too, is marvelous—no one who has passed through the gates of Thebes as described here is likely ever to forget the experience. Highly recommended.”
—Historical Novel Society

From the Publisher

2018-09-02

Two women, two Greek tragedies, one modern revamping.

British classicist Haynes writes a rejoinder—in fiction—to the near muteness of women in ancient Western texts. As she did with her psychological thriller, The Furies (2014), Haynes dives straight for Sophocles' monumental plays. This time, she puts a mother and daughter on center stage instead of Sophocles' title characters in Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone. Each woman has "the sense that someone was nearby, wishing her ill." For Queen Jocasta of Thebes, it is the housekeeper Teresa, whose wickedness puts Mrs. Danvers of Rebecca to shame. For Jocasta's youngest child, Ismene, the menace arrives in the first chapter. An orphan from age 5, the bookish 15-year-old leaves her reading nook only to be knifed by a stranger in the assumed safety of the palace. This thwarted political assassination dissolves into Chapter 2, which introduces Jocasta at the same age, bundled off a generation earlier to wed Thebes' fossilized King Laius. This complex opening structure settles into chapters that alternate between the two women. The device works well, building tension as mother and daughter both struggle with confinement, treachery, politics, and hair. (Some verities apparently hold for 2.5 millennia.) After Laius dies, Jocasta becomes notorious—and thanks to Sophocles, immortal—for unwittingly marrying her son, Oedipus. This Gordian knot of incest still has the power to shock, and Haynes is deft with it and with its consequences for the next generation. Her grasp of the ancient city-state is marvelously firm. Her sturdy sentences conjure the punishing Greek summer heat that quells movement and the gold rings bunching the fat on the fingers of florid men. But unlike the classically inspired novels of Madeline Miller or Colm Tóibín, antiquity bogs down in Haynes' expository prose. And while the author adds an intriguing new character, the physician Sophon who is instrumental to both mother and daughter, the women themselves remain too flat on the page.

Characters aren't as strong as the plot borrowed from antiquity.

Kirkus Reviews