Annabel LyonRecensioni

This book left me angry and horrified and I don't think that was Lyon's intention.

I am fully willing to accept that this was marketing error, and not a sign that Lyon is entirely morally bankrupt. It was marketed as "General Fiction", but it reads as a "Psychological Thriller". General fiction (aka literary fiction) usually reflects the ethical and moral views of its author. Psychological thrillers look at the world through the eyes of an emotionally or psychologically damaged person to show how people justify horrible behaviour that no one with a functioning moral compass could possibly condone.

***Spoilers Ahead***

"Consent" reads as a perfectly crafted psychological thriller which ends with two rich people murdering a poor person with addiction problems to avoid taking responsibility for their own feelings of guilt. I wish I was kidding, but no, that is the actual climax of this book.

Saskia is so self-absorbed that she does nothing help her sister when she is left bedridden after a life-altering car crash. She feels guilty for not doing what she could to help Jenny (her sister), and remaining a passive observer to their father's domineering treatment Jenny after her accident. She transfers this burden of guilt onto the drunk driver who hit Jenny and caused her injuries.

Sara resents having to care for her mentally disabled sister Mattie after their mother's death. Domineering and controlling, Sara breaks up her sister's marriage to a kind but poor man, Robert (who their mother knew and approved of), because she believes Mattie isn't mentally able to know what love is. Robert relapses into his drug addiction after losing Mattie and starts demanding Sara let him see Mattie again. Sara refuses. The tragic outcome of Sara's arrogance is that Robert, high on drugs, stops Mattie in the street. He grabs her shoulders and begs her to come back to him. Startled, Mattie stumbles backwards, falls, and smashes her head on the concrete, killing her instantly. Robert makes no attempt to flee and is devastated by her death. He does jail time for manslaughter. Guilt begins to consume Sara's thoughts, but instead of acknowledging that she was wrong to break up Mattie's marriage, she projects all of her guilt onto Robert and starts stalking him after he is released from prison. Again, no, I'm not kidding, she actually does this.

Robert has sobered up after his prison time, is in addiction counselling, and is gainfully employed as a construction worker. It seems as though, with the exception of being stalked by a psycho rich woman, his life is finally getting back on track. Unfortunately, Sara and Saskia meet after Saskia discovers that Robert was the driver of the car that hit Jenny, and they hatch a plan to murder Robert. The murder is carried out successfully and the authorities declare it a suicide.

The book ends with Saskia skipping town to start a new life in what I suspect is supposed to be a "happily ever after" ending. We are supposed to be delighted that Saskia and Sara have gotten away with murder, because they are rich people who were incapable of dealing with their own feelings of guilt. Ugh!

Filipo de Macedonia le pide a su amigo el filósofo Aristóteles que sea el tutor de su hijo Alejandro. Aristóteles se resiste dado el carácter rebelde del joven, pero acaba aceptando. Se establece así una interesante relación entre el gran filósofo y el sorprendente, carismático y, a menudo, terrible adolescente. Alejandro, heredero del trono de Macedonia, será obligado a tomar las armas muy pronto convirtiéndose en el legendario Alejandro Magno.

Thoroughly average. I felt as if Lyon did far too much to attempt to make Aristotle modern and relatable, and the sex, gore, and incessant cursing were entirely overdone. Read for Arcadia course in Greece.

I can't say I liked Lyon's book although it is clearly very well-written. It's about two sets of sisters, two of them disabled. And although there is so much more to the story I wasn't able to connect with any of the characters or the story in any meaningful way which made it feel remote. I don't have any siblings so I could be wrong in this, but these women did not show the sibling (or twin) relationships that I imagine should be there. The focus on perfume and clothes, particularly one dress, was puzzling and sorry to say, it went right over my head. The ending came as a surprise although I should have been prepared for it. What I enjoyed most about this thought-provoking story is that it's set in and around Vancouver.

3.5? This may change in coming weeks.

Vancouver, BC. Two women with sisters with mental diagnoses--Sara's sister Mattie is mentally disabled and will never live alone. Saskia's twin sister Jenny has always been impulsive and selfish (he diagnosis is never told to the reader).

Both women are now dealing with grief over the deaths of their sisters. Wracked by grief and guilt, they feel very alone, as their friendships with others are not as deep as they thought. They meet when Saskia starts looking into Jenny's friends and finds a link between the two deaths.

This story is gets darker as it goes on. I liked the dark parts, the storytelling of grief and loneliness and guilt. But somehow the perfume (see cover and story) and fashion thing is supposed to be important, they come up over and over, and that part I really didn't quite get.

Saskia and Jenny are twins but only equal in looks, their personalities could hardly differ more. Where Saskia is diligent and studious, Jenny enjoys life at the fullest and is always looking for some more thrill. Only a car accident in which she is seriously injured can put an end to her posh and impulsive lifestyle and brings the sisters back together. Mattie and Sara are sisters, too, the first with an intellectual disability, the second striving for academic success and the life she knows from stylish magazines. The latter sister pair, too, moves apart only to be forced together by fate again. Looking for reasons behind the tragic events, Saskia and Sara recognise that there is an unexpected link between them which goes far beyond the parallels of their sisterhoods.

I totally adored the first half on Annabel Lyon’s novel. Showing four young women emancipating themselves, developing personalities and ideas of who they want to be and how they want to live their life was wonderful to read. Even though the parallels show quite from the start, they are two quite unique sets of siblings which do have complicated but nevertheless deep bonds. Especially when Saskia and Sara come to the critical points in their sisters’ lives, they themselves are hit to the core, too, and have to make far-going decisions which also deeply impact their own lives. Throughout the novel, we see a great elaboration of characters with very authentic nuances and facets.

The second half did not convince me that much which, I assume, was mainly due to the fact that the central aspect of the relationships between the sisters was lost by then. Even though here the link between the two pairs was established and some secrets revealed, I found it lacked a bit of depths.

I found the title quite interestingly chosen, very often, “consent” is immediately associated with relationships and intercourse, but in the novel, however, also other aspects, e.g. to what extent the sisters approve of each other’s choices and decisions is explored. Especially Saskia investigates her sister’s life and by walking in her shoes, detects new sides of herself.

I used this book's cover design as inspiration at work. I started to read the story on my lunch hour and quickly got sucked into the plot. A cute, fun YA read.

I remember Annabel Lyon for her 2009 book The Golden Mean which I enjoyed very much. When I heard about another of her novels being published this fall, I requested an advance reading copy from the publisher.

This book focuses on two pairs of sisters. Sara and Matti are first introduced. Sara is an academic who has a love for fine wines, designer clothing, and expensive perfumes; she will spend a fortune on a dress. Her sister Matti is affectionate and trusting. Because Matti is developmentally challenged, Sara eventually becomes Matti’s caregiver.

The second pair is Saskia and Jenny. Though twins, they are total opposites in terms of personality. Saskia is the serious, responsible, hard-working university student while Jenny is the glamourous interior designer whose life is dominated by her self-centredness, impulsivity, and thrill-seeking. Because of an accident, Saskia has to make decisions for Jenny.

For almost three-quarters of the novel, chapters alternate between the two sets of sisters. In each tale, one sister, without consent, becomes responsible for the other. There are other superficial similarities like obsessions with clothing and perfume, but I wondered if the two narratives would ever actually intersect. Then tragedies bring them together in a shocking way.

The book examines how sisterly love can be entangled with resentment. Sara loves Matti but sees her as a burden who robs her “of the privacy Sara had sought so fiercely and protected for so long.” Sara admits to a friend, “’I wanted her at a distance’” and “The truth was that she was mean to Mattie, she was impatient, she was at times very, very cruel.” Likewise, Saskia loves Jenny but feels she can never escape her twin: “Jenny was her sun and moon: there was no escaping her. Saskia was ever alert to the ways her sister could hurt her, ever afraid of the ways Jenny might hurt herself.” Saskia thinks about the complicated truth of loving her sister: “Of course she and Jenny were closer to each other than anyone else. That closeness didn’t shield her from Jenny’s manipulations, her cruelty. Of course Saskia loved Jenny. That didn’t mean she wasn’t also frightened of her, and frightened for her . . . Jenny was the kind of person who could fly away or go up in flames at any moment. It was exhausting to be her counterweight, her rock, her extinguisher, her control.”

The novel also explores how grief can be entangled with guilt. Sara makes decisions for Matti without considering what might be best for her sister: “She had taken the sun and the moon from Matti.” A friend points out to Sara that she has not suffered because of having Matti in her life; he asks her sarcastically, “’Tell me all the opportunities you’ve had to turn down. Tell me all the jobs that were refused you. Tell me about your life of poverty and disenfranchisement and abuse. . . . You have money and education and power.’” Sara finds herself “chained in the masturbatorium of her own guilt, clawing at her own pinkest places.” Though she claims guilt will not consume her, Saskia says she is the one responsible for her sister’s fate: “’Me . . . I’m the one . . . I wanted her to know it was me. . . . Just like I want you to know it was me.’”

As the title indicates, consent is a theme. As a medical ethicist, Sara writes a paper, with Matti in mind, “on capacity and consent in adults with special needs” and Saskia, thinking about Jenny’s choices, writes a literary essay “on the implications of consent in Réage.” Neither Sara nor Saskia consents to the responsibilities thrust on them. Most significantly, the novel asks the reader to consider what s/he might consent to because of love.

I became impatient with parts of the book. Sara’s focus on perfumes and fashion and the purchase of a particular dress becomes tedious, as does Saskia’s later fixation with clothes. These sections have a purpose: “Clothes as costume and code.” It is noteworthy that Sara wastes an inheritance and what she spends on clothes “’could put a kid through college.’” Even Saskia asks, “’And I’m wearing my sister’s clothes, so whatever that says about me -.’” I just found that many of the descriptions were too detailed.

The novel’s best quality is its portrayal of relationships between sisters. I think anyone with a sister will acknowledge the realism of the complex sisterly relationships developed in this thought-provoking book.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).½

> Un roman qualifié de génial et de brillamment écrit par la presse du Canada anglais au moment de sa publication, en 2009. En 342 avant Jésus-Christ, lorsque le philosophe Aristote devient précepteur d'Alexandre, futur roi de Macédoine, ni le maître ni l'élève ne se doutent que, à eux deux, ils transformeront le monde. Tant par des démonstrations sur la table de dissection que par ses réflexions éthiques et métaphysiques, Aristote transmet à celui qu'on connaîtra sous le nom d'Alexandre le Grand la notion de «juste milieu», point d'équilibre entre deux extrêmes. Le jeune prince fougueux, qui désire déjà «ouvrir la gueule pour avaler le monde entier», révèle quant à lui des perspectives inattendues à son maître trop sage.
—Didier Fessou, Le Soleil

Title is quite ironic: Pythias, the heroine, daughter of Aristotle, is anything but sweet: prickly and feisty might be more like it. We see her childhood in a happy home; Aristotle respects her mind and teaches her. When Alexander dies, as Macedonians, the family leaves Athens for Calchis where Aristotle has property, neglected though it is. He dies and Pythias is left to fend for herself, becoming priestess, helper to a midwife, then a courtesan. In the last part, she marries her cousin, a soldier back from the war, with what we'd call PSTD, and they try to make a life together with him taking up farming. The story ends on perhaps a note of cautious optimism.

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The Sweet Girl by Annabel Lyon is a historical fiction novel in the time of ancient Greece, a story focused on the beloved and only daughter, Pythias, called Pytho, of the philosopher, Aristotle.

When I first opened the novel to the formal list of the Cast of Characters, as I might in reading a Shakespearean play, I was a tad intimidated with the ancient Greek names: Pythias, Herpyllis, Nicomachus, Tycho, Pyrrhaios, Glycera, Euphanor, and Nicanor. As beautiful as they sounded as they rolled off my tongue, I was hesitant in turning the page to read further in anticipation and assumption of a verbose reading—but I’m glad I did and ever so relieved that my assumption, too, was wrong.

The voice of the main character, Pythias, known as Pytho is directly intimate and perfectly written in the tone of an inquisitive, intelligent, yet young, and innocent girl born into privilege and prestige on account of her famous father.

A certain highlight in this novel is the humanized portrayal of Aristotle, the deep and forward thinker, the natural egotism and elitism sometimes awarded to men and women of genius, but especially, the endearing and tender love he has as a family man and father towards his household including those of his servants, and the special bond he has with his highly praised and beloved daughter.

What one would normally know of Aristotle is his philosophical discourse, but it is in this novel, The Sweet Girl, that readers are enlightened to his special pedigree, temperament, and soft inclination and social exception to his daughter, Pythias, who he unconventionally raises to read, think, explore, dissect, and study in so much that she is inclined to a deep reservoir of intelligence, logic, and wit that cannot contain her from the surprise of men of her father’s tutelage and peers and the scoffing irritation and jealousy of their wives as well as the women of the small garrison town, Chalcis.

What’s interesting to note is the ritualistic and relationship dynamic between Macedonian and Athenian cultures at the time of ancient Greece between the privileged wealthy and the destitute poor; the educated and the uneducated; the men and the women; the master and the slave.

The propriety of women as talented weavers, market hagglers, family chefs, and elegant forms of visual beauty come at a high price of illiteracy and social hypocrisy.

To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog, The Bibliotaphe's Closet:

http://zaraalexis.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/a-review-the-sweet-girl-by-annabel-ly...

Wonderful book about Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Wore the necessary research lightly and had a bit of an edge that was unexpected. Not reverential but deeply felt.

This book is a prime example of historical fiction. Real characters, actual happenings and a little imagination to create a story around it all. The book is about Aristotle, and in particular, his time as tutor and mentor to a young Alexander the Great. We see a very human Aristotle. Yes, the fabulous brain is there, but we see his uncertainties and the tenuous control that he has on his own mental health. Even then he was admired for his enormous intellect. A very young Aristotle is fostered out to a school that is managed by the great Plato himself. Plato become Aristotle's teacher and mentor. When Aristotle is asked by his childhood friend the king of Macedon (Philip) to tutor his young sons, he leaves everything that has become familiar in Athens and leaves with his wife and family servants to go back to the place of his birth. Aristotle and the young Alexander find they have an affinity for each other, as it becomes apparent that they suffer from the same mental illness. The friendship that develops between these two very great men is depicted so believably in this book. Ms. Lyon's debut novel is quite a remarkable achievement. Her exhaustive research, and her strong prose bring this ancient era to life.

An interesting, quick read about Alexander the Great who is tutored by Aristotle. Character driven, leisurely pacing. Really. brings these people to life

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: On the orders of his boyhood friend, now King Philip of Macedon, Aristotle postpones his dreams of succeeding Plato as leader of the Academy in Athens and reluctantly arrives in the Macedonian capital of Pella to tutor the king’s adolescent sons. An early illness has left one son with the intellect of a child; the other is destined for greatness but struggles between a keen mind that craves instruction and the pressures of a society that demands his prowess as a soldier.

Initially Aristotle hopes for a short stay in what he considers the brutal backwater of his childhood. But, as a man of relentless curiosity and reason, Aristotle warms to the challenge of instructing his young charges, particularly Alexander, in whom he recognizes a kindred spirit, an engaged, questioning mind coupled with a unique sense of position and destiny.

Aristotle struggles to match his ideas against the warrior culture that is Alexander’s birthright. He feels that teaching this startling, charming, sometimes horrifying boy is a desperate necessity. And that what the boy – thrown before his time onto his father’s battlefields – needs most is to learn the golden mean, that elusive balance between extremes that Aristotle hopes will mitigate the boy’s will to conquer.

Aristotle struggles to inspire balance in Alexander, and he finds he must also play a cat-and-mouse game of power and influence with Philip in order to manage his own ambitions.

As Alexander’s position as Philip’s heir strengthens and his victories on the battlefield mount, Aristotle’s attempts to instruct him are honored, but increasingly unheeded. And despite several troubling incidents on the field of battle, Alexander remains steadfast in his desire to further the reach of his empire to all known and unknown corners of the world, rendering the intellectual pursuits Aristotle offers increasingly irrelevant.

Exploring this fabled time and place, Annabel Lyon tells her story in the earthy, frank, and perceptive voice of Aristotle himself. With sensual and muscular prose, she explores how Aristotle’s genius touched the boy who would conquer the known world. And she reveals how we still live with the ghosts of both men.

My Review: I think this is up there in ambition of storytelling with The Song of Achilles, the five-star imaginative tour de force by Madeline Miller. Aristotle as narrator of his time spent in Pella? A good idea! Tutoring Alexander means getting to the heart of the legend that surrounds Alexander and vivifying him, dusting off the fustian and falderol accreted to his tale.

Here's Alexander speaking to Aristotle:

You who understand what a human mind can be, how can you bear it? I don't have the hundredth part of your mind and there are days when I think I'll go mad. I can feel it. Or hear it. It's more like hearing something creeping along the walls, just behind my head, getting closer and closer. A big insect, maybe a scorpion. A dry skittering, that's what madness sounds like to me.

Nice. Not a teenaged person speaking, and no I'm not retroactively applying 21st-century standards to Alexander, I'm fully aware that he was a powerful king's heir and a man before he was 17. But that's not my inner ear's problem with the passage.

It sounds like speechifying. It's not faux archaic, it's not arch or overwrought. It's just...speechy. Like a modern presidential speech to the jus' folks at a Town Hall. Aristotle, a man of immense intellect and unbounded curiosity, attempts to instill those qualities in Alexander's still-forming mind:

You must look for the mean between extremes, the point of balance. The point will differ from man to man. There is not a universal standard of virtue to cover all situations at all times. Context must be taken into account, specificity, what is best at a particular place and time.

Aristotle uses some pretty vulgar (in all senses of the word) subjects to pique the youth's questing intelligence's appetite for information. (If Alexander was alive now, he'd be a Google employee assigned to counter-hacking.)

My father explained to me once that human male sperm was a potent distillation of all the fluids in the body, and that when those fluids became warm and agitated they produced foam, just as in cooking or sea water. The fluid or foam passes from the brain into the spine, and from there through the veins along the kidneys, then via the testicles into the penis. In the womb, the secretion of the man and the secretion of the woman are mixed together, though the man experiences the pleasure in the process and the woman does not. Even so, it is healthy for a woman to have regular intercourse, to keep the womb moist, and to warm the blood.

In the end, the historical Alexander and the historical Aristotle are brighter figures for Lyon's spit-polish of their statues. It's a good book, and I won't read it again. I feel it's delivered its payload of meaning and philosophical pondering to me. Alexander sums up the experience of The Golden Mean quite well:

You and I can appreciate the glory of things. We walk to the very edge of things as everyone else knows and understands and experiences them, and then we walk the next step. We go places no one has ever been. That's who we are. That's who you've taught me to be.

I can't begin to tell you how tough it was for me to finish this five-star idea and rate it under four stars. I can't honestly push it higher, for the reasons I've given. It might seem to others a perfect five, which rating I can't give but can see how a reader with a more accepting nature would.

Watch this writer. This is a debut novel, following a story collection and a novella collection as well as some YA work. There is nothing in this book, either structural or aesthetic, that suggests to me a career of mediocre ~meh~ness. Fine, imaginitive writing will come forth from her pen. I haven't read the follow-on to this book, The Sweet Girl, about Aristotle's daughter. Happen that I will, with a deal of hope for excellence.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.½

Pythias, has been fortunate enough to grow up under the tutelage of one of the greatest minds of her time, her father, Aristotle. Encouraged by her father to learn, read, and explore, Pythias does not have the average life of a young woman growing up in 4th Century BC Athens. Her favorite activity is collecting wildlife specimens and placing their skeletons back together. When Aristotle's once student, now King, Alexander the Great dies, resentment against Macedonians, including Aristotle and his family, grows. Aristotle moves the family to Chalcis and a new chapter begins for Pythias.

This is a coming of age story for Pythias. Seeing that this took place in ancient Greece, the story and characters could have been very difficult to relate to. Luckily, Pythias was a wonderful character, she was very easy to relate to for me; it's great to have a female character who was encouraged to learn her entire life, even in this time period. Annabel Lyon's writing style transformed life in ancient Greece seamlessly, I enjoyed reading about daily life, rituals and customs of families at the time. As Pythias' character grows, she has different issues to face, and while there may be no grand adventure, Pythias must overcome several trials for a younger women in Greece and who is alone; she uses her strengths wisely and carves out a life for herself. Parts of Pythias' journey surprised me a bit, as well as the ending, but it is true to history.
This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

A book which really grew on me while reading, this tells the story of Aristotle's time at the court of his childhood friend Philip of Macedon at Pella. Initially employed to treat the king's elder, brain-damaged son, Aristotle is increasingly fascinated by Philip's younger boy: the smart, inscrutable and fragile Alexander. When Philip extends his job description to include tutoring Alexander, Aristotle finds himself set against a mind as thirsty for knowledge as his own, and as ruthless - but shaped of very different clay. By turns inspiring, poetic and strikingly vulgar, this is an odd book but one that really makes its mark.

Please see the full review on my blog here:
http://theidlewoman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-golden-mean-annabel-lyon.html

Lyon’s new novel tells the story of Aristotle’s daughter Pythos. When anti-Macedonian sentiment is high in Athen, Aristotle and his family relocate to the town of Chalcis. Soon after their arrival, Aristotle dies leaving his young daughter unprotected. What the book does is reframe the role of women in Greek society. Pythos regards her independence of expression as a “gift I’ve hurled at the future.”

The Vancouver's stories are literary beauties: well crafted with persistent, sparse imagery. No fun is about a middle class mother dealing with her relationships with her son, husband,and colleges.

I wish was a) brave enough to do a video review or b) lived near all of you so I could just gush in person about this book, which would be easier than trying to write down with words how reading it made me feel. I loved this book -- it broke my heart about ten times -- and I found Lyon's writing style beautifully sharp, modern, slightly magical, a teeensy bit mysterious, and very, very human.

Set in 4th century BCE, the novel follows Pythias, beloved daughter of Aristotle. Brilliant, but not pretty, Pythias' life is unfair: doted on by her father, educated by him and once praised as having one of the most brilliant minds he's come across, but still a woman, and good only for keeping house. She must remain modest, chaste, veiled, silent. 

When Alexander dies, Athens grows hostile to Macedonians, and Aristotle's family flees to a seaside town, heavily fortified by the army, where he has a family estate. After Aristotle's unexpected death, the impact of his passing is more than just an emotional loss. His mistress, the woman who raised and loved Pythias since she was four, is sent away, neither blood nor family nor a slave bequeathed to Pythias. When the family's stores raided, Pythias finds that the household slaves she loves do not feel the same way. Penniless and adrift, an unwanted woman among her father's acolytes, Pythias first fights to survive and then to find some measure of happiness.

Little is known about Pythias, so Lyon created a life for Pythias that is wild, complicated, incomplete (the story ends around, I think, Pythias' mid-twenties.) The strength of this story comes from Pythias, who is smart and striking, emotive and honest. Lyon's writing style is precise and sharp, yet heavy with inference and intimation. Pythias speaks in polite obfuscation at times -- ever the lady -- until her experiences shift her from someone reserved and polite to someone who owns her agency, decisions, voice. The plot follows this subtle transition; at some point the story drifts into the fantastical, but whether it is really magic or just hysteria (we learn earlier from Pythias' young friend about the wandering uterus), there's a disquieting sense that the concrete reality Pythias grew up with may not be the reality of the world she lives in. 

Technically, this book might be a 'sequel' to Lyon's The Golden Mean, but I haven't read The Golden Mean and I don't think I missed anything. This takes place, I believe, some decades after the events in The Golden Mean and is a vibrant, beautiful novel about growing up in the shadow of someone brilliant, famous, and contradictory; coming-of-age in a brutal way; and the powerful agency claimed by this historically forgotten woman.

I felt like I was right there with Pythias, like I was a shadow walking beside her, rooting for her.
The book is absolutely fantastic, there is not a sentence, word or syllable that is not perfect.
The writing is dreamlike, sad, funny, alive enlightening, clever…the book just grabbed me around the throat and throttled me into not putting it down until I was done!
I believe the title refers to what her daddy, Aristotle thought of her, his sweet girl, although at times she is anything but and maybe more strong, opinionated, willful and stubborn than sweet.
We come into the story towards the end of Aristotle’s life as he begins to forget things, becomes confused, sometimes sad, grows feeble contemplative and at the end of his popularity.
He relies on his daughter Pythias it seems, to keep his mind fresh and alive. Being a girl she is unable to learn with the men of that time but she finds ways to get what she needs to stimulate her mind and her spirit.
The family is torn apart when the king and then Aristotle dies, they are bound for other lands and separated. Pythias Seems to have a hard time, she goes from one place, man, family and town to the next, never finding or getting what she thinks she wants, until the end when it seems like maybe, just maybe things will work out for her.
A wonderful account of what life for an important man, his family and his daughter might have been like in an ancient, enlightened and yet superstitious world.
For me this book was magic, it just spoke to me. I will be reading “The Golden Mean” and anything else this woman writes in the future.

The stories were good short stories, but so short that I barely remember any of them or had time to really register what was happening before they were over! All the stories were well narrated (read), too, but because I can't remember half of them, I didn't enjoy it. Too short!

somewhat florid, over-the-top, like historical fiction tends to be (IMHO), but gripping and well-written.

Philosophy is not an interest of mine, so I think that soured the novel for me. I just kept getting frustrated with the restrictions of the historical plot and the silliness of some of the beliefs of the ancient Greeks.