There has been an explosion of novels retelling male-centered myths from the perspective of the women in the stories over the last decade or so. Most famous, perhaps, is Madeline Miller’s divine Circe, and Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne is one of the latest. Many of us know the story of how Ariadne helped Theseus to defeat the Minotaur kept in the labyrinth beneath her father, Minos’s palace, only to be abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos while she slept, Theseus sailing back to fame and glory in Athens. In Ariadne, Saint tells the story of what happens after as Ariadne builds a life with the god Dionysus on Naxos and her younger sister, Phaedra, is sent to Athens to become Theseus’ wife.
Saint starts with the cluster of myths that make up the story of the Minotaur–Minos’ arrogance offending the gods, Pasiphae and the bull, Daedalus building the Labyrinth, and Theseus defeating the Minotaur. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly Saint moves through these stories. They are not the point of the novel, and Saint does not dwell on them, keeping the pace moving forward nicely. However, they do serve a purpose in the narrative. It is sometimes hard when you read or hear stories from mythology as stand-alone myths to see how often they connect with other myths, and Saint weaves these stories together in a way that makes that interconnection clear. I think it was the first time I really focused on the story of Daedalus and Icarus escaping Minos and Icarus flying too close to the sun happened in direct response to Theseus fleeing Crete after slaying the Minotaur. It’s obvious Saint is well-versed in Greek mythology and her confidence in crafting these myths into a larger narrative for her audience allows her to establish crucial context and her characters’ personalities quickly. Saint is also a beautiful and evocative wordsmith, and the places of these myths come alive in vivid detail under her pen.
The novel alternates between Ariande and Phaedra’s perspectives, and I found Phaedra to be a much more compelling character. Ariadne is not particularly strong, a worrier almost to the point of being tiresome. She is also quite naive, sometimes willfully so, for much of the novel. These are characteristics that allow men to take advantage of her, from her father to Theseus and ultimately Dionysus, unmalicious as his intent may be, and render her increasingly uninteresting as the book goes on. Part of this is a function of the choices she has made to survive and own her life, ignoring what she doesn’t want to see in favor of hoping her dreams will come true. In a way, it reflects her agency. But it also doesn’t make her a particularly engaging character to spend time with.
Phaedra is much stronger, both as a character and as a personality. She is a child when the story starts, and we see her grow, adapt, and come into her own as queen of Athens while skillfully managing Theseus in order to maintain her own autonomy. In the end, her actions and choices become erratic, and she descends into brittleness and delusion with tragic results. Despite that, hers is a much more compelling character arc, and we truly feel for her and her despair in a way that we don’t for Ariadne.
Overall, though, Ariadne felt slight. For much of the book, characters wait for time to pass, creating the sense that there could be more story that Saint has chosen not to dig into. In the end, I don’t know that I actually have much more insight into Ariadne and even possibly Phaedra than I got from the myths themselves. Even so, Saint’s beautiful wordcraft makes it a book worth spending time with, especially if you have an interest in Greek mythology and the women behind the heroes and gods.