I was astonished to find myself flying through page after page of Haynes’ summaries, enthralled at the plot twists and playwrights’ audacity and eager to find out what happens next. Haynes’ book dwells not on the plays but on the stories of women’s lives that they contain; nevertheless, her enthusiasm for the original texts is impossible to ignore. Her broader goal requires her to provide outlines of the texts in which her subjects’ stories are buried, but those outlines are beautiful, compelling overviews. They’re crafted a bit like what it would sound like to have a good storyteller relate the latest gossip to you over drinks at a club, with all the colloquial jokes and asides that a lively retelling would include. If I’d read summaries like these back in high school, I would have been instantly hooked. Pandora’s Jar is a delightful, compelling read. Lively, provocative, and well-researched, it’s the sort of book that leaves readers with a thirst to learn more.

With Pandora’s Jar, she returns to nonfiction to examine the origin stories and cultural legacies of the best-known women of classical literature, with the characteristic blend of scholarship and sharp humour that will be familiar to fans ... Her frame of reference expands out from the original texts (which she quotes in Greek to explain linguistic ambiguities) and classical artefacts to include Beyoncé, Ray Harryhausen and the social media response to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, to illustrate how far the (often one-sided) narratives of these woman have penetrated our culture ... This is an erudite, funny and sometimes angry attempt to fill in the blank spaces.

Haynes has a stand-up comedy background, and her wry wit leavens these grisly tragedies. Her irreverence—Kronos eats his children and ‘fails a basic fatherhood test’—has the ring of affectionate family teasing: that’s how intimately she knows and loves her subject. Alongside the laughs are rigorous analysis and ethical wrangling, as she considers the dilemmas posed by mythology ... If I’m ever prosecuted, I’d like Natalie Haynes to defend me. She argues persuasively, carving out space for women denied a voice (Medusa), overshadowed (Jocasta) and unjustly condemned (Helen of Troy). She explores feminist literature reclaiming mythological narratives...and matches entertainment with erudition, discussing Greek linguistic nuance alongside historical context. If anything, I could have done with more of the latter to offset all the myth. Agile, rich, subversive, Pandora’s Jar proves that the classics are far from dead, and keep evolving with us.

Part of the project of this hugely lively, fun, yet serious book is to unpeel the accretions that have affixed themselves over time, like barnacles on a shipwreck, to the women of Greek myth, from Pandora to Helen of Troy via Phaedra and Medea. Haynes examines the original sources for the characters, noting how, often—though far from invariably—later incarnations have underplayed the much fuller, more complex roles given to them in antiquity ... nerdish quibbles aside, this is a hugely enjoyable and witty book ... It is a generous book too, demonstrating how much space and energy there is in these old stories—stories that need only to be activated and animated by new readers and writers to burst into fresh life.

Haynes brings two important things to the project. She studied Classics at Cambridge and used to be a comedian. Her tone is often comic, in a Radio 4 sort of way ... Haynes more often sounds like someone clever scared of sounding dull. This may explain the limited range of cultural references. Haynes knows her ancient Greeks—she adores Euripides—and is not afraid of classical scholarship. Excellent. The rest is pretty relentlessly pop ... It leaves a hole in her main argument, which is that strong Greek women have been lost, forgotten, marginalised or demonised by later western culture. How would we know? Where is western culture? ... The only sustained analysis is a savaging of Cellini for his misogynist 16th-century bronze of Perseus holding up the severed head of Medusa ... When Haynes gets down to retelling the stories, though, and teasing out their distortions and elisions, the book flies ... Haynes brings Helen fascinatingly to life ... You do not have to identify with Medusa as a woman to be moved and persuaded by writing like [Haynes's]. It makes the book’s moments of relatively football-fan feminism feel jarring.

Haynes's authorial voice is remarkable: expressive, nuanced, impassioned. Her tone is absolutely accessible, even conversational, and often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Haynes (also a stand-up comic) is as well versed in the modern world and its concerns as in the ancients ... Haynes's assessments of the visual arts (from ancient pottery through Renaissance paintings to modern television and movies) offer another dimension in this meticulous study. The classics are as relevant, subversive and entertaining as ever in this brilliant piece of work. Clever, moving, expert, Pandora's Jar is a gem, equally for the serious fan or scholar of Greek myth, for the feminist or for the reader simply absorbed by fine storytelling across time and geography.

Portrayals of these women frequently fall along predictable, usually condemnatory lines—Medea the unnatural mother, Helen the ultimate femme fatale. Haynes complicates these narratives, diving into the historical and literary records ... Packed with wry humor and scholarly insight, Pandora’s Jar shines a new light on our oldest stories, illuminating its subjects in all their painful complexity.

Although the author assumes her audience is familiar with Greek mythology, readers of all levels of knowledge are certain to be enthralled with her analysis and find her humor and wit captivating ... A fun and informative addition to the ongoing consideration of ancient mythology.

Classicist Haynes...challenges common ideas about Greek mythology in this sharp corrective ... Haynes also offers a fascinating study of renderings of mythological figures in art as they changed over time, including on ancient water jars, in Italian bowls from 400 BCE, and as 16th-century statues. While in some sections Haynes assumes too much knowledge on the part of the reader, when she hits her stride and seamlessly blends historical, textual, and artistic analysis, her survey sings. Even those casually familiar with Greek mythology will find this enriching.