Customer Reviews

Quiver

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In this retelling of the story of Atalanta, Stephanie Spinner continues in the tradition of great novelists like Mary Renault who render ancient history and mythology fresh, accessible and immediate without adulterating the original power of the stories. Atalanta, a mythical huntress with a remarkable story, is still a teenaged girl -- confused, hormonal, and horse-crazy. Anyone who has ever been a adolescent girl or known one will feel a certain affinity to and sympathy for her.

Spinner doesn't fall into the trap of stylistic modernization, however. Despite her character's accessibility to the modern reader, Atalanta remains undisputably an inhabitant of an ancient, mythical world in which creatures like centaurs are an unremarkable (though smelly and obnoxious) aspect of everyday life, and the gods are flawed, mercurial and fickle. Apollo and Artemis carry on conversations filled with the idle, slighty vicious barbs one would expect from siblings, though not, perhaps, from devine ones. That our heroine, long-suffering and stoic, is at the mercy of these creatures seems the ultimate injustice: she is so much better than they.

I suppose that injustice is part of what makes "Quiver" so convincing and evocative of the original myths it is based on. The Greek Gods of Homer and Ovid were never especially divine in judgement or emotion; what makes them so terrifying and moving is that they are just like us, only bigger, more powerful, and even more ruled by the drives and emotions we deem ignoble, primal, and unmanagable. In this godly muck of jealousy, revenge and chaos for the sake of it, Atalanta is a beacon of level-headedness, humanity, and nobility.

Quiver was a wonderful integration of mythology, romance, and adventure. I have recommended this book to many of my friends and my Latin teacher. The main character, Atalanta, was one of many characters beautifully brought to life through dialogue and description. Spinner's Quiver was a delicate mix of the many tales of Atalanta. I hope to read many more books by Stephanie Spinner in the future.

Quiver was a wonderful integration of mythology, romance, and adventure. I have recomended it to many of my friends and my Latin teacher. The main character, Atalanta, was one of the many characters beautifully brought to life through dialogue and description. The plot was a delicate mix of the many tales of Atalanta. I look forward to reading many other books by Stephanie Spinner.

Quiver was a wonderful integration of mythology, romance, and adventure. I have recommended it to many of my friends and my Latin teacher. The main character, Atalanta, was one of the many characters beautifully brought to life through dialogue and description. The plot was a delicate mix of the many tales of Atalanta. I look forward to reading many other books by Stephanie Spinner.

I love retellings. Of myths, of fairytales, of classics novels. Any retellings of any kind. I am fascinated by them, I enjoy wondering and discovering how an author will re-invent an old, often well known, tale. I am endlessly surprised and amazed at the seemingly endless ways a story can be approached and retold without ever getting boring.

This is why Quiver, by Stephanie Spinner, has been sitting in my to-read list for nearly two years, until, finally, I got my hands on it last week. In her debut novel, Spinner tackles a Greek myth. And let me tell you, I love Greek mythology, from Homer to Xena: Warrior Princess, I rarely get tired of it. And I am even more excited if the retelling tells the story of a little known myth, or mythical figure, and I become intrigued and fascinated if said figure is a girl or a women, as their voices are so often forgotten, stifled or ignored. More often than not, in fact, they do not have a voice, or I should say, are not given one.

In Quiver, Spinner gives a voice to Arcadian princess Atalanta, the swiftest human in Greece, and one of its best hunters too. Abandoned by her father at birth, because she was not a boy, the myth says that Artemis, chaste Goddess of the Moon and the hunt, sent a bear to rescue baby Atalanta. The girl then, while growing up learning to hunt, and shoot and run, dedicated herself to the Goddess, promising to stay chaste always. It is then in her girlhood, that her father recalls her to him and intends to marry her off so she can produce an heir. In her desperation to stay true to the Goddess, Atalanta makes a deal with her father saying that she would only marry the man who can outrun her in a race. All who fail must die.

Spinner stays true to the myth, not diverging from the events or settings that form Atalanta's plight and fate, and the book might suffer a bit from it. In the end it's not so much a retelling as an account of the myth from its main protagonist's point of view. Quiver is more interested in looking at the reasons behind the events. What were the thoughts and motivations behind such seemingly cruel acts? Why did Atalanta do what she did? There are no innovations or surprises beyond the new voice in which it is told, especially if one knows how the myth goes.

Quiver is a small and quick read, easy to go through in a couple of hours or so, and while most people might not get attached to Atalanta as a character, I didn't think the point was to make her likeable. It was to make her heard. I kept wanting things to go differently, I kept hoping she would do things differently, but all I could do was watch the events unfold to their inevitable conclusion.

I am still glad I read it. Glad it was written. Glad a voice was given to an almost unknown heroine, even if it's not the voice I would I've liked to hear. Now if only there were more books doing the same things. I would read stories upon stories about such women as Ariadne, Medea, Andromache and countless others who are lost among the Achilles, Jason, Theseus and Hercules of history.

A not-too-hard to read book about ancient Greece with a new twist on the Atalanta story. A good read; good action; straightforward plot.

I had really high hopes for Quiver. The cover is really appealing and it's about Atalanta, the fastest mortal in Ancient Greece. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my hopes.

This is a really challenging novel to get into--note that I'm not saying that it's a challenging story to get into. Atalanta's history, as a devotee of Artemis that vows to remain unmarried until a man outruns her, is fascinating. Stephanie Spinner just wasn't able to pull it off. She uses far too many challenging Greek names right off the bat; I wanted to stop reading and I used to live in Greece! A guide to the characters would do well at the front of the book. Also, she has a chorus of the Greek pantheon narrating in little asides at the beginning and end of chapters. There just serve to take the reader out of the narrative and wonder why bother reading more. Finally, it seems like Spinner didn't write enough, so they had to space the novel out with very few words on a page, effectively wasting a ton of paper.

My class is going to be reading The Lightning Thief next, but I have a student who has already read the entire series. In my quest for a few novels that he can read while we read out class novel, I have failed. Don't read this!