Pandora’s Jar

I have had great fun reading Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes about women in the Greek Classics. Natalie isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as Stephen Fry, but I find her blend of scholarship and wry humour very appealing. She is known to English fans for her Radio 4 show Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics and in her latest book she stands up for all the classical women who get a bad rap—being scapegoated for things that men, or usually the gods, caused. For instance, Medusa is raped by Poseidon, which makes Athene angry, but instead of going after Poseidon, she blames Medusa and gives her snakes for hair and makes her a monster! Then there is Pandora. Zeus is very annoyed when Prometheus steals fire from the gods, so in reprisal Zeus asks Hephaestus to fashion the First Woman. Aphrodite gives her all the airs and graces, dresses her in a silver dress and asks Hermes to take her to Epimetheus as a kalon kakon or beautiful evil. Somehow the story gets burdened with a jar which gets tipped over, or opened, to release all the world’s ills. It was Erasmus in the 16th Century who turned the jar into a box, but Pandora, like Eve, is always blamed for every bad thing which besets humanity from painful childbirth to ingrown toenails.  As for Helen, who has the ‘face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium’, Haynes blames Menelaus for going off on a business trip, leaving Helen with handsome Paris, and she either elopes or is abducted and taken to Troy, and who can blame her? Of course, Aphrodite is behind the whole thing, so why isn’t Aphrodite blamed for the Trojan War, not Helen? The story of Eurydice is poignant and touching and Haynes contrasts the ancient stories with modern versions, including a poem by Carol Ann Duffy which made me laugh. This book has stories about ten classical women, and it’s a delight.  

I am always pleased when a new Tana French novel comes out, and The Searcher is surely her best yet. Cal Hooper is a retired cop from Chicago, divorced and with a semi-estranged adult daughter, who buys a tumbledown cottage in the West of Ireland and sets about painting and carpentering with his favourite music blaring and no one much to object. He is observed by a moody adolescent called Trey Reddy who asks him to find out what happened to older sibling, Brendan, who has disappeared. Cal’s enjoyment of the peace of his little bit of heaven is shattered, but he finally agrees to ferret out from the locals what has happened. To tell that much of a Tana French story is sacrilege, because it is always the slow build-up of her plots which captivate me. There is a nod to the 1956 John Wayne movie The Searchers where the hero goes hunting for his lost niece who has been taken by Apaches, but, in The Searcher, Tana French weaves her own particular magic with radiant descriptions of country and characters. You just need to start at page 1 and let the magic take over. 

Observers look with bemusement at the United States with its toxic hatreds, racism, attempted politicisation of the Supreme Court, gun overload, and the intricacies of their electoral system. Harvard Professor Jill Lepore has written a one-volume history of the US called These Truths in which she examines how the country has tried to put in practice the noble ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how they have ended up with today’s sharp divisions and hatreds. She starts in 1492 and doesn’t flinch from describing the cruelties to native Americans, the horrible stain of slavery, and the deep divisions that led to the Civil War. The Founding Fathers counted black people as three -fifths of a person and this attitude still prevails. She includes the history of the internet in a political context, technology, and religion, which, in the US, has always been an important factor in political and civil life. Her history begins with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln: ‘We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.’ She doesn’t mention Trump, but his shadow overhangs the later chapters, indicating just how difficult the ‘disenthralling’ will prove to be. These Truths is written in an engaging style and Lepore covered an enormous amount of material without losing my interest. Definitely recommended for the general reader, and it should be in every school library. 

In Jack Marilynne Robinson has returned to her Gilead novels to examine Jack, Reverend Robert Boughton’s prodigal son, and his ill-starred romance with Della, the daughter of a Bishop. We know it is ill-starred because Jack isn’t reliable, but also because Della is black, and, in the 1940s, mixed-race unions were crimes punishable by imprisonment. Jack is a liar, a thief and a drunkard—but also a voracious reader, with a gentle, oddly attractive personality. The Library lady allows him slack when he steals books, and his landlady has a soft spot for him because he puts a geranium in his room and cares for a stray kitten. He and Della fall in love when they are accidentally locked inside a graveyard over-night. Della sees the good inside this sad outsider, and it seems that their union is divinely ordained. A high-school teacher, Della risks losing her job, and worse, if she continues this liaison—her best friend warns her, and her family are desperately concerned, but to Robinson, love is a gift from God. She keeps returning to her Gilead characters because she finds them so interesting and because to her, religious questions are vitally important. For readers ambivalent about Robinson’s work because of the religious element, you can put Jack into non-theological language by asking if a person can be irretrievably bad and unable to be salvaged, and if love can be redemptive. All Robinson’s novels have a deep moral seriousness, and she is vitally concerned with America’s racial trauma, so Jack is a valuable addition to her work. Above all, it is a beautiful novel. Sonia