It's nice and short! A collection of stories inspired by mythic women, told in modern style.

Discussion begins May 1st.

Bumpety bump.

Did anyone manage to read this? Well, I'll start.

I don't often read short stories, but this collection really won me. While it's obviously coming from the tradition of reinventing fairytales which, I think, came from people like Angela Carter and Marina Warner, it seemed to have an original take on these ancient stories. I love fairytales and myths; they are really important to me and I do tend to see the world in terms of old stories because I raised myself on them (I put it like that because they weren't really read to me, I discovered things like Greek myths myself and enjoyed them a lot as a child, obviously in child-friendly versions). So in transforming them to fit the modern world, the stories here really tickle me.

My favourites were the title story, Helen Of Troy's Aerobics Class and Having Sex With A Saint (although it was awful).

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find ths, so it will be next month for me.

I'm still waiting for this to come in at my library.

In the meantime I picked up a novel with a jacket blurb from Sarah Maitland, Achilles by Elizabeth Cook. Almost a prose poem, and only taking a couple of hours to read, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to satch up on the legend of Achilles before seeing Troy or (better) reading the Iliad.

I did mean to reread the Iliad before Troy but since I'm planning on seeing that the minute it opens, I might not get time.

Sorry it's been difficult to get hold of this one; but there's no time limit so, whenever.

Yes, I'm supposed to be doing a re-read too (this time in verse, not prose). But, much like the other two times I've read the Iliad, there's only so much slaughter I can stand, and I have to read it in little chunks. Don't think I'll be finished it before Troy, either.

My library finally got the book in! So I picked it up over the weekend, and have just finished it. I enjoyed it. It actually has a lot in common with Not the end of the world (which I hope you will all shortly be reading), though with older protagonists.

I too really loved Helen of Troy's aerobics class; also Loving Oedipus (though, ewww) and Choosing paradise. (I was particularly provoked by the idea that Eve might think that her menopause was a lifting of God's curse on her and Adam.) But I didn't like Sybil - it seemed to be a prose poem taking a bend too fast.

I was intrigued by the references to Guinevere and Lancelot's double-locking box in Foreplay. Their plan (they each have a unique key; she locks the box and sends it to him; he locks the second lock and returns it; she unlocks her lock and resends it; it's now only locked with his lock and he can open it with his key) is, as I understand it, sort of how PGP encryption works for e-mail.

The book as a whole reminded me a little of The Book of Mrs Noah by Michele Roberts, in tone as well as theme. But somehow not as visceral as Angela Carter?

Yay!

I really liked Foreplay and the way that it shows Guinevere and Lancelot having their affair not as young lovers, cuckolding an older king, but as older, disillusioned people. That's pretty interesting about the PGP. I think it's also about how they are both complicit in it, it's something that each has to consent to and decide on at each stage.

Sybil didn't stick in my mind. The background info was useful, but I don't much like things which use typographical gimmicks like the f-a-l-l-i-n-g bit.

Angela Carter is a good comparison (I don't really know Michele Roberts' work); I wonder if she seems more intense because her books are novels, longer and able to build up more momentum and layers. I don't read that many short stories because even in the best, there's often something quite formulaic about them. Blah blah blah - twist, you know.

I really love the last line of Maid Marion's story. "Don't believe everything you hear about Guy of Gisbourne either. He was a very sexy man." Heh.

Here's something else I meant to point out. The story about Helen of Troy's Aerobics Class is not actually as ridiculous as it might seem. I've got this book about the Spartans (by Paul Cartledge) and he talks about how Spartan women - she was Queen of Sparta, Menelaus got the throne by marrying her - were regarded. They were renowned throughout Greece for their athletic ability and training, were educated similarly to boys. Young women ran races and took part in javelin throwing contests, gymnastics etc (naked!) and were known as "thigh-flashers". There is a joke in the Lysistrata (the comedy about the sex strike by the women) about how a Spartan woman has great breasts because of the exercises she does. So Helen doing aerobics to keep in shape is not actually that unlikely! I really liked that dimension to it. Conversely, it made me annoyed at how wimpy Helen was in Troy. She would have been a lot more feisty.