RaveBookreporterBroadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes amplifies the muted voices of women in her all-female retelling of the Trojan War. From slaves to queens to muses to deities, she takes the scraps of women Homer offers us in The Iliad and The Odyssey and patches them into full characters with powerful stories ... What follows is a series of primarily self-contained chapters tackling not only the Trojan War but also its long and drawn-out aftermath. For the most part, each chapter is its own entity and does not follow a linear timeline ... While these stories give A Thousand Ships the feel of a series of thematically connected vignettes, the book is lent narrative scaffolding by the Trojan women and Penelope\'s letters to her husband, Odysseus, transforming it into something between a collection and a novel ... With the wisdom of Athena and a pinch of humor, Haynes considers the many ways in which women exhibit strength, even in situations of relative powerlessness.
