Thank you NetGalley, Natalie Haynes, and Harper Perennial for the ARC!

Let me start by saying that I am far (like far far far) from being a classicist. Going into this, 98% of my knowledge about Greek mythology comes from the Percy Jackson books and the other 2% comes from the one mythology class I took in college. Some might say I’m wholly unqualified to review this book! They’d be right, but I’m going to do it anyway!

I adored this book. While I wasn’t surprised to find that women were constrained to a different set of social standards - I mean, when haven’t they been? - I was surprised to see the number of conflicting stories surrounding different myths. I know I shouldn’t have been considering that passing stories through space and time is basically the greatest, most historic game of telephone known to man and scholars alike. Haynes divides her book into chapters for each of the nine women she looks at, plus a chapter for the Amazonian women. Each chapter dives not only into the many written works surrounding the woman of discussion, but the artwork depicting the same scenes. Haynes' analysis of these works then shows the common view on these women and their stories as well as highlighting how different storytellers (artists, authors, weavers, etc.) have influenced the prevailing perception of these women today.

4.5 stars! I knocked .5 off because of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spoilers. I don’t care how old it is, I’m still hyping myself up to watch it!

Instead of another “Jocasta’s Children” or “A Thousand Ships,” Natalie Haynes has put together a very different reading experience with “Pandora’s Jar.” Whereas the author’s previous two titles placed female characters from Greek mythology into center stage through creative retellings of their respective stories, her latest takes a nonfiction approach with a critical deep look at a selection of several women from the classic myths. Haynes thoroughly combs through the various known primary sources for each woman’s respective myths, and in turn reveals a surprising array of conflicting story versions, translation issues with the original Greek, and points out other details that paint every figure in an extremely different light from what most of us are familiar with. The end result is doubtlessly the author’s most eye-opening work to date.

My apologies for the light spoilers, but to use some examples from the book’s title figure - Pandora’s tale is usually told plainly as a story of a curious woman who ends up punishing mankind by opening a box containing all the ills of the world. But in fact, her myth is shown by Haynes to be quite rife with competing story variants and contentions of interpretation. For starters, the “box” that so many of us are familiar with is a mistranslation of what would be better phrased as “jar,” and a specific kind of jar that can be knocked over or opened by accident quite easily at that. Meanwhile, one version of the story says that the jar held blessings that were set loose, not curses. And in another version of the story, it’s not even Pandora who opens the jar, but an unnamed “foolish man.” This is all just a sampling of the revelatory details in only the first chapter, and to say the least, these details and variations alone leave a great deal to mentally chew on. Such is the pattern that the rest of the book follows. In every single chapter, the most widely familiar characterizations of a woman of mythological renown is exhaustively shown to be one-dimensional and incomplete. And in turn, with a wealth of evidence presented with clarity by Haynes, a much more complex and far more interesting character is successfully unearthed.

Haynes has really pulled off something fantastic here with “Pandora’s Jar.” Through this wealth of new perspective, she does a great service to both her subjects and also the many readers who will not only enjoy a highly stimulating work but will inevitably find themselves equipped afterward with a new critical eye for the classic myths.