Amazon Story Bones - Softcover

Frye, Ellen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883523001 ISBN 13: 9781883523008

Publisher: Spinsters Ink, 1994

Synopsis

Twenty years after the fall of Troy, an aged Amazon retells the stories of her people to her granddaughter, including versions of the myths of Thetis, Medusa, and Hippolyta

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Reminding readers that "who holds the pen shapes history," Frye ( The Other Sappho ) imagines a past in which Amazons were not the single-breasted, man-hating, male progeny-killing sisters described by Greek men. Her revisionist novel, really a chain of loosely linked stories, takes place 20 years after the fall of Troy. A young girl named Iphito flees an arranged marriage to live with her Amazon grandmother in a mountain cave. The old woman and her (female) mate reconstruct their past for the girl, explaining how Amazons came into being when mother goddess Thetis saw "upstart" male gods like Zeus--who called himself father of the universe "as if fatherhood had to do with the work of creation"--invading the spirit of the land and decided to create a new race living apart from men. Familiar myths appear here with unfamiliar denouements--in the story of Hippolyte, she outwits Heracles in his play for her golden girdle--but Frye doesn't entirely rewrite the past; she acknowledges that even the Amazons couldn't escape the spread of the warrior gods when the battle of Troy scattered their tribe. However, armed with this heretofore untold history, Iphito decides her father's assertion that "the days of the Amazon are over" is far from true. Frye's gentle prose offers a marked contrast to the violent passion normally displayed in classic Greek myths.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Amazon Story Bones is a sumptuous and gratifying feast of story and song, of image and lyric, of history and invention. Ellen Frye rejects traditional male definitions of the Amazons to give us familiar Greek myths retold from an Amazon perspective. The myths are followed by a collection of stories told against the backdrop of the Trojan War. Weaving the threads of their own lives through the tapestry of a history previously head only from the point of view of the ruling class, two old women (a born Amazon and an Amazon by choice) reveal the knots that hold the weave together. A child marks her heritage and pledges to keep it alive in story and song. -- Midwest Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Spinsters Ink
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1883523001
• ISBN 13: 9781883523008
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 193