Most of the story concerns the growing-up period of Odysseus and Penelope's daughter, Xanthe, who was conceived just before Odysseus left for the Trojan War and so is 20 when he returns. Between puberty and her homecoming to Ithaca, Xanthe lives in disguise with Helen of Troy. She had been sent away to avoid rape at the hands of her mother's obnoxious suitors. While in Sparta, with Helen, Xanthe is initiated into women's mysteries. Helen and her own daughter Hermione do not get along. Hermione loves her Aunt Clytemnestra while she blames her own mother for all the deaths and abandonment caused by the 10-year Trojan War.
Corona provides her own vision of Helen's abduction. In this, Helen is unable to resist the will of Aphrodite. Despite wanting to stay with and faithful to her husband, Paris is too irresistible, and she leaves on her own volition to accompany him to Troy.
Although much of it is a coming-of-age book, it would be a mistake to think of Penelope's Daughter as a child's book. It is well-crafted adult modern literature about and for women, with a wide variety of types of sexual encounters.
Passages parallel the Odyssey very nicely, Telemachus is portrayed as unsympathetically unheroic, and overall the portrayal of the ancient world seems reasonable.
Penelope's Daughter
By Laurel Corona
NY: Berkley Books, 2010
978-0-425-23662-8
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
