Ebook {Epub PDF} Alcestis by Katharine Beutner

Early praise for Alcestis: “Katharine Beutner’s Alcestis lends divine breath and flesh to that ancient shade of myth, the lonely and brave queen who gave her life to Hades in exchange for her husband’s. Alcestis is a novel about sacrifice, renunciation, and loss — also the persistence of desire and the vitality of love. Everyday life in the ancient world, a no-escape-clause afterlife in the underworld, vulnerable . Beutner's take on what happens to Alcestis is unusual, cleverly subverting the myth of the woman who sacrifices herself through love for her husband. However Alcestis is a slightly uneven character: she . A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. Katharine Beutner’s first novel, Alcestis, takes a minor character from Greek mythology and expands her story in ways that complicate her traditional representation as an ideal “good wife” who sacrifices .

Katharine Buetner s Alcestis is a far more willful heroine, and her encounters with the gods of the underworld resonate with a genuine sense of the numinous. Jacqueline Carey, Namaah s Kiss and Kushiel s Dart. Beutner renders her multilayered heroine with beauty and delicacy, and concerns herself with no less than the intricacies of the soul. Now Katharine Beutner gives Alcestis her story back. In the tradition of great retellings like Mary Renault's The King Must Die or Ursula K. LeGuin's Lavinia, Beutner helps us re-see the familiar. When Alcestis tells her own story, we see her as a girl queen: a coddled possession, moved around from owner to owner, trapped in various. Click to read more about Alcestis by Katharine Beutner. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers.

Beutner's debut tackles the Greek myth of Alcestis, who so loved her husband that she sacrificed herself to Hermes in his place. Beutner's retelling, set in ancient Greece, involves a more complex character: her Alcestis is a misfit who has deeply mourned the loss of her sister Hippothoe since childhood. From Alcestis () Prologue. They knew the child’s name only because her mother died cursing it, clutching at the bloodied bedclothes and spitting out the word as if it tasted sour on her tongue. After a few minutes her tongue stilled, and her limbs too, until she lay on the bed gray and cold as stone. ‘Alcestis’ by Katharine Beutner. Author: Andrea Lawlor. August 9, Myths are made to be retold. Most come from the oral tradition and are reworked by each new teller, until someone writes a version down. Euripedes wrote down his version of Alcestis’s story some years ago, and ever since then he’s had the last word. Until now.