Elektra by Jennifer Saint
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was looking forward to this because I've read the Sophocles and am familiar with the whole Freudian aspect from within Psychology and frankly, it was just nicely MESSED up as a tragedy.

So why didn't I fall in love with this particular book?

It was competent enough, and as I was reading it, at least through the halfway point, I kept thinking it was OKAY, assiduously so, but something was bothering me. The women who are left behind are literally left behind the biggest, most exciting battle of Greek antiquity. Troy. For over a decade. All the action takes place elsewhere, and all we have to go on here is a tragedy before papa goes off to lead the army of the Greeks, the tragedy caused by the same jerk, and we're pretty much stuck in the heads of those who were left behind.

Mind you, this is a messed up tragedy that even gets the furies involved, but most of that is AFTER the war is won.

In this, it's mostly a whimper and daddy worship and mommy hating her husband and taking a lover and then going "Oh, My" when crap hits the fan. And then we have some of the OTHER more memorable female characters from across Greece, on the other side of the war, to give a counterpoint, but it's weird and hardly necessary at all except to bring in the action that has been so missing from the primary tale.

So here I am, wondering what the hell is the point. Except for a sequence that could have been finished in a hundred pages, all the exciting stuff is off-page and I frankly kinda hated every single character in the book.

It's kinda sad, but it's true. Pity can only take me so far. A good tragedy should also make us CARE about the victims. The original play was better.

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