Atalanta: The dazzling story of the only female Argonaut

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Atalanta is a lyrical, exciting and deeply poignant tale of one woman's remarkable life - and I cannot wait to read it again.

There are two romances in this story, and I very much appreciated the different ways that Atalanta experienced these relationships. Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book.Since Greek myths come out of an oral, aural tradition, the cadence and tone of the text in any updated version remain key. And when we read “The Witch’s Heart” for bookclub, it began to highlight one of the things I was starting to struggle with.

She is a young woman who has lived her life almost entirely untouched by the patriarchy, and so she has never been taught that she is less valuable or important than a man. The nymphs flung themselves into the pool, clustering around the goddess to shield her from his view, but it was as though he was frozen to the spot, just staring.She doesn’t need any rewriting to make her into a female role model: she’s always existed in ancient art and literature as a fearless woman famed for being faster, stronger and more adventurous than even the greatest male heroes.

Like the others, it explores the life of a woman from Greek mythology, in this case Atalanta, famous as a hunter, a runner and the only female Argonaut.Jennifer Saint is now a full-time author, living in Yorkshire, England, with her husband and two children. I remember the taste of the cold, clear water they gave me to drink, how clumsy I was with the cup they held to the mouth of the spring for me.