Ariadne: A Novel

by Jennifer Saint

Overview

A mesmerizing debut novel for fans of Madeline Miller's Circe.

Ariadne, Princess of Crete, grows up greeting the dawn from her beautiful dancing floor and listening to her nursemaid’s stories of gods and heroes. But beneath her golden palace echo the ever-present hoofbeats of her brother, the Minotaur, a monster who demands blood sacrifice.

When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives to vanquish the beast, Ariadne sees in his green eyes not a threat but an escape. Defying the gods, betraying her family and country, and risking everything for love, Ariadne helps Theseus kill the Minotaur. But will Ariadne’s decision ensure her happy ending? And what of Phaedra, the beloved younger sister she leaves behind?

Hypnotic, propulsive, and utterly transporting, Jennifer Saint's Ariadne forges a new epic, one that puts the forgotten women of Greek mythology back at the heart of the story, as they strive for a better world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250773586
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	708
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Due to a lifelong fascination with Ancient Greek mythology, Jennifer Saint read Classical Studies at King’s College, London. She spent the next thirteen years as an English teacher, sharing a love of literature and creative writing with her students. Ariadne is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

02/01/2021

Saint’s enchanting debut retells the myth of the minotaur through the eyes of Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete. Ariadne’s life has always been touched by the gods, as her mother, Pasiphae, is the daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She has also witnessed their wrath, unfairly brought down upon Pasiphae by Poseidon, the sea god, because of Minos’s transgressions against him. Her punishment, to fall into obsessive love with a bull, resulted in the Minotaur, Ariadne’s half-human, half-bull brother. When Theseus, prince of Athens, is sent as part of that city’s annual sacrifice to the Minotaur, a smitten Ariadne helps him defeat the monster and they flee Crete together. Ariadne hoped they would bring her sister, Phaedra, with them, but fickle Theseus breaks his promise, leaving Phaedra behind and abandoning Ariadne on the island of Naxos. The island is the home of Dionysus, god of wine and pleasure, and he takes Ariadne as his wife. Phaedra, meanwhile, is reluctantly married off to Theseus in a political maneuver of her father’s. As the women navigate their changing positions of power, they court disaster at the hands of both gods and men. Saint expertly highlights how often the women of this world pay the price for the actions of the men around them. Lovers of mythology should snap this up. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A Most Anticipated Book (Bustle, Buzzfeed, PopSugar, Goodreads)

“Beautifully written and nuanced, Ariadne explores the bonds between women and their epic quest for agency in patriarchal Greek society.”
—BuzzFeed

"Circe fans would do well to take note."
—Bustle

“If you loved Madeline Miller’s Circe, then you have to check out Ariadne by Jennifer Saint.”
—PopSugar

“Enchanting…Saint expertly highlights how often the women of this world pay the price for the actions of the men around them. Lovers of mythology should snap this up.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Complex—and bold…Fans of Madeline Miller's Circe will enjoy this faithful retelling that centers the often-forgotten women of Greek myth.”
—Booklist

"Ariadne is a shimmering tapestry of two sisters bound by deceit and the shadows of family history. One marries a hero, the other a god. As their lives criss-cross through girlhood and womanhood, the secrets that their husbands keep become a monstrous backdrop to their relationship. With a fresh voice and keen insight, Saint adds flesh and bone to an ancient myth, drawing the reader into an uneasy world of ever-afters."
—Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger

“An ancient story of love and sisterhood reimagined, Jennifer Saint's Ariadne is a truly masterful debut—compulsive, absorbing and lyrical. Saint breathes new life into the forgotten women of Greek mythology with a novel that's both incredibly absorbing, and full of heart.” —Katie Lowe, author of The Furies

“Ariadne gives voice to the misused Princess of Crete who betrayed her father to save Theseus from the Minotaur. Relevant and revelatory.”
—Stylist (UK)

“Saint’s immersive novel thrusts the reader straight into the heart of Greek mythology with this wonderful reimagining of the story of Ariadne.”
—The Independent (UK)

“Abeautiful epic…In aworld ruled by temperamental, petulant gods, Ariadne is a shining beacon offemale strength and courage—making this a story that’s impossible to forget.”
—CultureFly(UK)

From the Publisher

12/01/2020

Like Madeline Miller's Circe, Saint's debut novel offers a feminist retelling of a classic Greek myth, this one centering on the princess who helped Theseus slay the Minotaur. Here, Ariadne sees Theseus as a means of escaping her home, but she doesn't want to leave little sister Phaedra behind.

Library Journal

2021-02-10
A debut novelist retells timeless tales from a feminine perspective.

Classical mythology endures—at least in part—because of its malleability. Ancient Near Eastern cultures borrowed one another’s deities and transformed them to meet their own needs. Poets, playwrights, and painters have been creating their own iterations of the Olympian gods for thousands of years. One of the difficulties of working with familiar figures and well-known tropes is making them fresh. Writers crafting long-form narratives face the additional challenge of putting flesh on archetypes. In choosing to give a voice to a woman plagued by awful men—her father, King Minos; her first love, the hero Theseus; Dionysus, the god of wine—Saint succeeds in presenting a distinctive version of Ariadne. The author doesn’t quite deliver on making her protagonist—or anyone else in this novel—real. One issue is Saint’s prose style. She uses formal, stilted language that is, perhaps, supposed to create a sense of antiquity but instead just feels unnatural. There is more telling than showing, and characters launch into soliloquies that might make sense in a Greek tragedy but are out of place here. On the whole, Saint is writing in a mode that is neither realist nor fantasy but an awkward place in between. For example, as she offers a detailed depiction of the infancy and development of the Minotaur—Ariadne’s half brother—the monster ceases to be horrifying and instead becomes slightly ridiculous. The reader has leisure to ask such questions as why, since cows are herbivores, a creature with the head of a bull would enjoy a diet of human flesh. Worse, though, is that Saint manages to make Dionysus—a god who inspired bloodthirsty frenzies in his drunken followers—boring. Ariadne becomes his bride soon after she’s dumped by Theseus. After a few years, Ariadne and Dionysus are staying together for the kids and hoping that a couples vacation to Athens will spice things up.

Ambitious but uninspiring.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More