Customer Reviews

The Leto Bundle

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The heart of this narrative follows a mother's love and self-obliterating care for her children through events of insensible cruelty and extremity; for this reason the story captures its readers with fear and ultimately leaves its shadows cast. Levity's fun and intellect's games yield early in the pages. The premise, that a mythological Titan, Leto, would find her struggle for survival in memory and world long after her genesis through representations in scholarship (translations of her story as imitations of Persian romance), in art (as antiquities restored in a museum display seeking relevance), in visions, politics, music and maybe even in life too shows innovative promise. Warner employs a diversity of styles to trace the manifestations of Leto's changing fortunes; we read emails, fragments of translations, dialogue, sweeps of narrative history, and visionary communications of the inner ear. In the end, the story makes bold and thoughtful gestures toward the need for individual resilience and healthy immigration policy.

The mysterious writings on the bundle of linen found in the sarcophagus of "Helen" or Leto do not quite unfurl the magic I would have hoped to discover but perhaps that is of necessity since the story dwells not in a Greek or Hellenistic or Byzantine past but throughout history into the present. The story of Leto, her desperate love and challenges, compelled my turning of pages in spite of the fact the at the outer frame of the story, the tale in present time, seemed to receive far less imaginative attention. The characters of Gramercy (the rock star), Kim (the grade school teacher) and Hortense (the art historian) seem slight in comparison to the history of the Leto Bundle and so they prove less sympathetic.

In no way do I regret having read this novel. It's not stellar but it's far from dreary, on account of the author's imagination and historical grasp (though place names in the story are imagined they convey allusions to realia). To my mind, Warner proves more spellbinding, inspiring, persuasive and natural a writer in her historical works and essays than in her fiction.