The story of Agamemnon’s fateful return to Mycenae is vividly captured in a retelling of The Iliad that gives Homer’s women a voiceThis is the last book in Pat Barker’s Women of Troy trilogy, in which The Iliad is reimagined from the perspective of the women Homer consigned to the margins. It opens with the maid Ritsa and her mistress Cassandra boarding the Medusa, a “battered old sick bucket” bound for the Greek kingdom of Mycenae. Cassandra is the kidnapped Trojan seer and concubine of Agamemnon, the warrior king who is returning home after a decade of war. Having razed Troy, Agamemnon will be expecting a hero’s welcome, though there is uncertainty over how he will be received by his wife, Clytemnestra. Ten years have passed since he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the gods in exchange for safe passage to Troy. Will Clytemnestra have forgiven her husband or will she seek revenge?The voice actor Kristin Atherton is the book’s assured and imaginative narrator, portraying Ritsa as a northerner who is loyal if fitfully exasperated by her mistress, and Agamemnon as gruff and short-tempered. She brings just the right amount of complexity to Cassandra, capturing both her youth and the fear and wisdom gleaned from her visions. Continue reading...