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A review by withlivjones
Cassandra by Christa Wolf
challenging
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
“Send me a scribe, or better yet a young slave woman with a keen memory and a powerful voice. Ordain that she may repeat to her daughter what she hears from me. That the daughter in turn may pass it on to her daughter, and so on. So that alongside the river of heroic songs this tiny rivulet, too, may reach those faraway, perhaps happier people who will live in times to come.”
This book is part character study, part prose poem, part 200-page long stream of consciousness that depicts one of the most realistic descriptions of wartime life out of all the Trojan Cycle retellings I’ve read. Christa Wolf understands that real life is far more complicated than fiction - there is no defined good and bad side, lines are blurred, not everyone working on the same team has the same agenda - and Cassandra is the perfect mouthpiece for this retelling as she is seen as a madwoman because she is able to see through all the politics involved in the war and she speaks her mind against it. The concept of Cassandra’s life literally flashing before her eyes in the minutes before her death is an ingenious one and so refreshing after reading a lot of retellings that narrate the same story in the same way.
It is the kind of book that grows on you - during the first third or so I was really struggling to get into it as the pacing felt too drawn-out and the non-chronological storytelling was quite confusing, but the second half had me in a chokehold. If you have a decent attention span and lots of free time I think you could read the whole thing in a day.
Overall this book is heartfelt and full of female rage. Would I recommend it to someone who is a complete newbie to Greek mythology? No. But as someone who has read the Iliad and several retellings of the Trojan War, this is definitely a new favourite in the genre.
This book is part character study, part prose poem, part 200-page long stream of consciousness that depicts one of the most realistic descriptions of wartime life out of all the Trojan Cycle retellings I’ve read. Christa Wolf understands that real life is far more complicated than fiction - there is no defined good and bad side, lines are blurred, not everyone working on the same team has the same agenda - and Cassandra is the perfect mouthpiece for this retelling as she is seen as a madwoman because she is able to see through all the politics involved in the war and she speaks her mind against it. The concept of Cassandra’s life literally flashing before her eyes in the minutes before her death is an ingenious one and so refreshing after reading a lot of retellings that narrate the same story in the same way.
It is the kind of book that grows on you - during the first third or so I was really struggling to get into it as the pacing felt too drawn-out and the non-chronological storytelling was quite confusing, but the second half had me in a chokehold. If you have a decent attention span and lots of free time I think you could read the whole thing in a day.
Overall this book is heartfelt and full of female rage. Would I recommend it to someone who is a complete newbie to Greek mythology? No. But as someone who has read the Iliad and several retellings of the Trojan War, this is definitely a new favourite in the genre.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Child death, Rape, Slavery, Grief, and Death of parent
Minor: Miscarriage, Sexual content, and Pregnancy
Period-typical attitudes