Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes

We joined a book club recently, I confess somewhat sleepily. I ordered the book and it took ages arriving, finally on the day before the evening of the book club. As I glanced over the email for the event start time I blinked hard, oh the actual author will be at the book club? Uh oh!

I speed-read the first two chaters, made my apologies to the club and exhaled. It was such an amazing evening with intelligent, witty and, I must say, completely beautiful women. The book we were reading was Pandora’s Jar: Women In The Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes.

Natalie’s style is humorous and knowledgeable. She selected ten dominant female characters from the Greek myths and picked through them giving the women more personality, history, meaning and character depth. The versions of the stories we know have been filtered through thousands of years of patriarchy and misogyny. The only redeemed male from antiquity is the playwrite, Euripides. Even in his time, Euripides was controversial for giving the female lead the chance to put their story across and give context to their actions illiciting sympathy and understanding.

I confess I was more interested in some of the characters more than others. I enjoyed reading about Pandora and the Amazons the most but overall it’s an interesting and informative book, well written.

Also, I love the book sleeve, gold and blue is a gorgeous colour combination.