Claire North’s Ithaca is a retelling of the Odyssey focusing on Odysseus’s faithful wife, Penelope. Although Penelope is the central character, the narrator of the novel is the goddess Hera, who brings us a story of women’s efforts to defend the island kingdom of Ithaca and preserve its independence in the midst of a storm of political machinations. This is the first installment of what I guess is going to be a trilogy or duology; Odysseus hasn’t come home yet by the end of this book, but there’s already been lots of drama and intrigue. I really liked this book, and would place it alongside Madeline Miller’s Circe and Natalie Haynes’s A Thousand Ships in the category of feminist retellings that have really brought these ancient Greek myths to life for me.