I had very mixed feelings with this book. On the one hand, there was some very cool information on the latest archaeaolgical research and discoveries. New technology means DNA can tell us about travel in the Late Bronze Age, if families are buried together, or prove that more warrior gravesites are women warriors than were earlier believed. Texts unearthed through the Hittite Empire introduce powerful queens helping to rule the Hittite world next to Troy, and letters and tablets have been unearthed that suggest enough similarities between pieces of Homer's poems and real life to make Hauser's arguments plausible that the epics contain fragments of memories for ways of life that would have probably been old when the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down. I enjoyed most of the archaeological information, because I like reading about that kind of thing.

Other parts of the book were, to me, more of a stretch. There was a lot of repetition. Hauser clearly didn't trust her audience to remember who any of the characters were, so would remind you every single time- especially the women already less well known like Briseis. Once or twice I can understand, but it was really annoying having her do it all the time. Each chapter would start with a short fictional story, which I know is the current fad, but personally I find throws me out of the nonfiction narrative and I always find off-putting. Some chapters were a stretch in terms of subject matter. In Circe's chapter, for example, I expected to learn about the ancient world's views on magic, or women living alone, or something else that might focus on women. Instead it is mostly about pigs. Yes, Circe and pigs go together and Hauser manages to connect them to religion and briefly to the mystery cults, but I was hoping for more.

Frequently in the chapters Hauser brings up the modern retellings we see that are so popular today. Madeline Miller, Natalie Haynes, and some of her own books as well. These additions missed the mark for me. The readers of those books may be part of the audience she's trying to reach with this book, but adding the retellings here in the chapters themselves isn't part of the story of Homer's world. It would have worked better in the introduction or conclusion as part of the conversation on why women are now retelling the stories and focusing on reclaiming the lives and voices of the women in Homer's world.

I had high hopes going into Penelope's Bones, and while I would overall recommend reading it, I can't say I was as impressed with the book as I had hoped to be. Maybe I was expecting too much out if it. After all, Trying to uncover what has been pushed to the margins for thousands of years, both by the erosion of time, the men of the time period and by male archeologists until fairly recently, doesn't give you a lot to work with.

I received an ARC of this boon from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I was expecting this to be a book about female empowerment, not about female trauma. The bits about archeology are interesting, but the book isn’t a good fit for me. It should have a trigger warning. DNF ~20%.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

Greek myths and legends long fascinated me, so I was excited to dive into Emily Hauser's 'Penelope's Bones.'

"Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well—complex, fascinating women whose stories have gone unexplored for far too long."

Hauser's examination takes literary cues and archeological data to take a closer look at the women notoriously featured in semi-silent roles throughout Homer's epics.

This is such an interesting read, I really loved going into these women that became such anchors of Greek mythology entirely through a male gaze. Hauser also wisely examines that gaze as it progresses through history. By taking the archeological aspects into play she opens the book up to the wider world of mythology.

I really loved this book and marinated on her points often.

A fascinating reexamination of the historical period of the Iliad, using a fresh look at the original ancient Greek text, as well as incorporating the up to the minute science being used to dig up the past, all showing how much women were involved in a world that for far too long was viewed as men-only.

Emily Hauser is the author of THE GOLDEN APPLES TRILOGY, a retelling of several Greek myths. But in Penelope’s Bones, she puts her Classics/Ancient History scholarship to work in the service of non-fiction, using her own knowledge and a veritable mountain of cross-discipline evidence to re-examine the role of women in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, while also using those works to animate the real woman of the Bronze Age the fictional portrayals only hint at. A highly successful marriage of history and literary criticism, Penelope’s Bones will reward those interested in ancient history, Classical literature, or the modern retellings of Classical myths and legends that have been so prevalent lately.

Hauser’s general premise is that despite the lack of “page time” in the epics, and the way the women are so frequently silenced (either within the text by the various male heroes or outside the text by Homer), women are not mere background noise. She points to the “central paradox” in Homer:
the claim the epics make that women don’t matter and the fact that in every case they are essential to the story and the myth. There wouldn’t be an epic without a Muse. There wouldn’t be a Trojan War without a Helen. The Iliad wouldn’t begin without a Briseis. The Odyssey wouldn’t end with a Penelope.

And after a wide-ranging introduction that sets some context and offers some background explanation/exploration in areas such as Greek history, recent archaeological discoveries, how the epics came to be, the attitude toward women and gender, and more, Hauser gets down to proving her point regarding the centrality of women to the stories. She devotes each chapter to a female character from either The Iliad or The Odyssey, using them as a springboard for discussion and as a representative of a role or experience:
• Helen (Women at War)
• Briseis (Slave)
• Chryseis (daughter)
• Hecuba (Queen)
• Andromache (Wife)
• Cassandra (Prophet)
• Aphrodite and Hera (Seducer and Matriarch)
• Thetis (mother)
• Penthesilea (warrior)
• Athena (gender fluidity)
• Calypso (Weaving)
• Nausica (Bride)
• Arete (Host)
• Circe (Witch)
• Eurycleia (Handmaid)
• Penelope (End)

As noted, Hauser makes use of a wide range of evidence as she brings the women of the time to life. Besides the texts themselves (which she is careful to point out cannot be read simply as “history”), she turns to archaeological findings, DNA tests, grave artifacts, ancient artwork, trade goods pulled up from an ancient shipwreck, geological studies, climate data based on tree rings and other sources, strontium tests on ancient teeth to determine diet and regional placements, letters and lists inscribed in clay tablets dug up from Sumeria, the Hittite Empire, Egypt, and other sites, and more.

It’s truly an impressive marshalling of cross-disciplinary research and grounds her claims firmly in the data. And when the data isn’t fully there or requires more interpretation, she makes clear that she is moving into the more speculative realm. Something I appreciated, particularly in those (rare) moments when I thought she was moving onto less solid ground, as in the section on gender fluidity for instance (I thought her general argument — that even then gender was less binary than we tend to believe — was strong and well supported, but when she tried to tie it more specifically to a discovered burial site she pushed it a bit too far). That said, I can see how some people might wish for a little less information, say, about pig husbandry/sacrifices or regional trade goods, but I’d rather this type of book errs on the side of “too much” information rather than too little. And to be clear, I personally didn’t consider it too much; I just can imagine some would in spots.

The entire text was strong throughout, but I’ll mention a few favorite elements. One is the way she shows how much of our view either of the portrayal of women in the classical texts or the role of women in this period is often based less on objective findings and more on subjective (read as women-trivializing) interpretation, starting with the Greeks that came after Homer and moving up to more modern times. Multiple examples are provided, for instance, of how bodies found buried with weapons were simply assumed to be male without any attempt to discover if that was actually the case or not. Or course, it turned out not to be, as recent DNA testing of such gravesites has revealed that anywhere from 20-40 percent of bodies buried with weapons were in fact female. In a similar vein, Hauser notes how one body was noted to be buried with a sword, but when it became clear the body was female, the archaeologist’s record magically transformed the sword into a far less significant “dagger.”

Another favorite section debunked the whole “The Classical world was a world of white” — white statuary, white temples, white clothes. Similar to the above examples, where misogyny led the interpretation down the wrong-but-desired path, here a racist view of whiteness as purity and sophistication did the same. Because of course it turns out that the Classical world was a riot of color, whether we’re talking painted statues, painted columns, or brightly dyed clothing.

Perhaps the most powerful section though comes when Hauser spends a goodly amount of time examining the dangers of childbirth during the Bronze Age (for both mother and child). Here she once again pulls together a wide range of source material and disciplines (DNA tests, strontium, bookkeeping records, etc.) to show not only how appallingly common it was for women to die giving birth but how this was not due simply to lack of modern medicine but the result of systemic disparities in food distribution that saw women receiving far, far less. This meant not only were they weak at the time of childbirth, but this lifelong malnutrition also meant they had more narrow pelvises than normal, making childbirth far more dangerous. A physical reality that was exacerbated by being constantly pregnant, further weakening their bodies and never giving them the chance to fully recover.

Finally, I’ll just add that Hauser does put on her fiction writer’s cap at the beginning of each section, giving us a brief vignette with that chapter’s woman in a more vibrant narrative style before shifting smoothly back into non-fiction mode. It’s a nice touch (and probably not a bad advertisement for her trilogy).

Any issues I had with Penelope’s Bones were quite minor. A few spots as noted where she may have pushed connection a bit too far for my own liking. Maybe a few times where we may not have needed quite so much detail. A chapter where the representative characters — the handmaids Odysseus has killed at the end of his story — felt a bit detached from the larger historical points she was exploring (an example perhaps where the structure tied her hands a bit too much). None of them had any large impact at all. If you’re at all interested in ancient history, Greek epics and myths, the ways in which we let our biases lead us astray in our interpretation of “objective history,” or have enjoyed one or more of the recent retellings that have become such a publishing trend, then you’ll find Penelope’s Bones informative, thoughtful, thought-provoking, stimulating, and generally fascinating. Highly recommended.

Attempt to Archeologically Build a History for Greek Women
Emily Hauser, Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, June 2025). Cloth: $30. 496pp, 6X9”, 30 color plates, 70 halftones. ISBN: 978-0-226-83969-1.
****
“Weaving together literary and archaeological evidence, Emily Hauser illuminates the rich, intriguing lives of the real women behind Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well—complex, fascinating women whose stories have gone unexplored for far too long. In Penelope’s Bones, award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser pieces together compelling evidence from archaeological excavations and scientific discoveries to unearth the richly textured lives of women in Bronze Age Greece—the era of Homer’s heroes. Here, for the first time, we come to understand the everyday lives and experiences of the real women who stand behind the legends of Helen, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, Penelope, and more. In this captivating journey through Homer’s world, Hauser explains era-defining discoveries, such as the excavation of Troy and the decipherment of Linear B tablets that reveal thousands of captive women and their children; more recent finds like the tomb of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos, whose tomb contents challenge traditional gender attributes; DNA evidence showing that groups of warriors buried near the Black Sea with their weapons and steeds were, in fact, Amazon-like female fighters; a prehistoric dye workshop on Crete that casts fresh light on ‘women’s work’ of dyeing, spinning, and weaving textiles; and a superbly preserved shipwreck off the coast of Turkey whose contents tell of the economic and diplomatic networks crisscrossing the Bronze Age Mediterranean.”
The preface and introduction are not very well handled. They chat about the author’s childhood introduction to Homer, and about generally why so little has been written about ancient women. This was already stated in the blurb. Something more interesting, or new was needed in these sections. The first interesting fact appears on page 5, when the author comes across a magazine about a DNA finding from the Harvard Medical School. They have found DNA of “Four Mycenaeans” who were women in Greece between 1700-1200 BC “buried in a royal cemetery”, or at approximately the date and place described by Homer, who omits explaining what women’s lives were like, and thus such archeological evidence is needed.
There is a lot of speculation and hot air in this book. But there are some revelations about archeological fraud. For example, Schliemann smuggled a “hoard” of treasure he dug up “on a ship out of Turkey and into Greece” to avoid paying a share, or surrendering the historical pieces to the “Ottoman government”, and instead selling it to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where it was displayed between 1877-80. These were jewels described as belonging to “Helen” and the city found was claimed to be Troy because of the cultural value placed on the myth of the Trojan War (30). To verify this claim, the author summarizes parts of Homer’s fiction, which mostly just has her be “silent” in a world seemingly controlled by men (34). The possibility is considered that Helen was merely “a Homeric fantasy” and never existed. In fact, the Trojan War and Troy might have been fantasies designed by Greeks to claim ancient ownership of an enormous territory with mere historic-fiction, instead of warfare. One piece of evidence noted that suggests this possibility is: “At Hisarlik, the circuit wall that Schliemann thought belonged to Homer’s Troy was just one layer in a site… these remains were far too deep to date to Homer’s Troy: one a thousand years too deep. “Priam’s Treasure’ dates to a layer of the city known to archaeologists as Troy II, to around 2400 BCE—more than a millennium before the Trojan War should have taken place” (36). This confirms my own speculations that most of ancient history is pure-fiction. But while there are no jewels at the correct Trojan War level there is evidence of a war there with: “Skeletons of unburied bodies… in the streets… Bronze arrowheads are scattered everywhere. Houses, their carcasses blackened by fire.” Thus, there are layers that show wealth, and a layer that shows complete destruction by war, but not the two of them together: indicating events could not have happened as Homer described. The author does not draw this latter conclusion (37-8). And the dating of the destruction is incongruent with an attack by Mycenaeans because their “palaces on the Greek mainland had already gone up in flames” (39).
The section on Linear B tablets describes financial records that had been kept and preserved by a central authority. These indicate there were many female “highly specialized textile workers operating in the heart of the palace at Pylos, experts at decorating a finely ornamented cloth border known as o-nu-ka. They’ve been allocated two female supervisors to oversee the work, one ‘TA’ (a supervisor for the group) and one ‘DA’ (a highly-ranked supervisor)”. The female workers’ children are also noted to receive a portion of “food” (59-60). While these records do not indicate these women were enslaved. The author assumes that they were because Homer described women from their area (Chian) in his portrayal of “Briseis—an enslaved woman who first appears at the opening of the Iliad, captive in the Greek camp in the hut of Achilles, who has claimed her as his war prize” (60). This projection is problematic because it claims slavery existed in ancient Greece based on a text with clearly false information about this period. Homer was a propagandist who would have been paid to normalize the use of slavery by the emperor of his time with the claim that this was an ancient practice. Trusting his opinion on this matter is thus historically frivolous. The author then argues that there is archeological evidence in Linear B to support they were enslaved because they were reliant on the palace for food, their children were fed and then some were put to work on reaching maturity, and they were segregated into a woman’s quarters. This is an absurd reasoning. Living in the palace would have been the most luxurious housing in the region. Children would have gained an education by working on-the-job and gaining skills from the highly trained craftsmen at the palace. Being segregated into a woman’s quarters would have given these women special safety from harm: they certainly would not have been sold off as prizes to soldiers to dwell in their huts (64-5). The author seems intent on supporting the traditional version of history, even as archeology fights against its accuracy.
This is a pretty good book, as it introduces some reality into history that tends to just repeat myths or fictions of old without overlaying it with the reality of what the dug-up evidence has been saying. Searching for evidence of what women were up to is certainly a worthy effort, as it can help change modern perceptions about what the “natural” or ancient role of woman has been. It certainly could not have been true that women spent their lives in total leisure while the men worked. Housework became extremely time-consuming at one point: it included laboring as a cook, launderer, plumber, cleaner, woodworker, teacher, farmer, gatherer, and several other tasks. There is much that books have been distorting with sexist subversions of truths. This is a good step towards reality. It should be helpful to researchers of ancient Greece, no matter if they are feminists or masculists.
Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Spring 2025 issue: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-spring-2025

An Aside: Let me begin by saying: I do not like Homer. I have never liked Homer. As a woman that has always had no interest in men and men's stories (and it is, in fact, a man's story), Homer thus has no appeal to me. I can know that it's foundational western literature—and the contents of it's pages—without torturing myself by reading it. More so, women in any facet of ancient Greek tradition—whether found in literature, like here, or general myth—have always been a hard spot for me. This is the "birthing culture" of the west, of "democracy," and yet one so repulsive toward half of the population.*

So, this book should have been an excellent read for me, someone who considers herself allergic to anything having more than a passing brush to do with classical Greece or Rome and its stories of importance. Fairly or not, this book had to handle the challenge of convincing me there's something valuable to be gleaned in Homer, through that which I do believe in—real history, accessed through modern research methods. To that end, Emily Hauser did well, which is a testament to her love for, and belief in the value of, Homer, and her conscious framing of the issues therein.

Now, the book itself: it operates off of scraps. This is not Hauser's fault, it's simply the nature of trying to tell ancient women's stories, which are so often undocumented, and I've read other books like it ( The Dark Queens by Shelley Puhak). This means there's a lot of mays, might haves, could haves, and perhapses.

Hauser also discusses modern women writers and their reclamation of Homer (including Hauser herself; she's the author of For the Most Beautiful ), which is good and great—but she discusses that, and it's significance, a lot, way after we've gotten the point that it's a good thing, and what these authors are doing in giving agency to these women's voices. This is a clear sign of trying to bring in the Greek retelling crowd, as the book's own blurb advertises. It feels a wee bit like advertising, though, especially when almost every chapter is capped off by another listicle of books.

In a similar vein, some of the more pop culture references made my eye twitch. Comparing Cassandra to Greta Thunberg is a thing Hauser does. And, look, I'm the same age as Thunberg (not a grumpy boomer), and love her, but—please. Please, god, no. Just no. I'm not saying I don't get the parallel she's drawing but... no. Very much giving a "how do you do, fellow kids, this is a reference that is totally hip and relatable" vibe.

The worst, I believe, was organizing each chapter by Homer character, because some characters just don't have enough historical content. And that's okay. I'd rather not have a chapter on Circe if most of what we get is about Mycenaean pig raising. I mean, alright, there's a technical connection, I guess, and the information was a bit interesting. But what sealed the deal for me on this book structure was using the twelve enslaved women killed at the end of the Odyssey to discuss... earthquakes. Well, more broadly, the Late Bronze Age Collapse: a nightmare combination of drought, natural disaster, disease, invasion, and rebellion that brought down civilizations such as the Hittites.

We are introduced to the enslaved women's story, how, after slaughtering Penelope's numerous suitors Odysseus directs twelve slave women to clean the halls of the blood and gore, before they're to be hanged for... being raped by said suitors? (Though there's some debate on whether that was the offense, or if it was that they were colluding with the men. Do you see why I have no interest in Homer?) Either way, to make the medicore connection between these women and the tangent Hauser goes on about the existential crisis the Mediterranean region was facing, she writes:

Seen in this context, perhaps the brutal punishment meted out to the consummate scapegoats of the enslaved women represents an attempt to bar away the terrifying spectres that were to become the hallmarks of the end of the Bronze Age... But the ghosts of the enslaved women, and the flapping of their feet like the butterflies' wings that bring the hurricane, hint darkly that there is much more still to come.


No. Absolutely not. Leave the metaphor and those poor women alone.

Now, a pet peeve: What is her definition of prehistory? She'll write "...in the world of prehistoric Greece," before, in the next sentence, discussing what's been written on Linear B tablets, coming from this same "prehistoric" period—that isn't prehistory. We have written records, which is the standard criteria for "history," which most agree started in the fourth millennium bce, roughly, while this period is 1200/1300s bce. If she's talking pre-Herodotus and other formal "histories," then... that's odd. I'm not implying she doesn't know the difference in the two—thats impossible—but it was just confusing and distracting not having this contrary characterization explained. At least, if it was, I missed it.

In conclusion? Should I meet Heinrich Schliemann in the hereafter, I will give him an uppercut.

*Yes, compared with the changes that came to Greece under Roman Christian colonialism, there were some benefits this "othered" half were afforded, like, say, high priestesshood. But that shouldn't be used to dismiss the reality of most women, and also just why priestesses were offered those positions, and on what terms. And if someone cites goddesses such as Athena as an example of positive conceptions of women—you only need to look at what Minerva did to Medusa in Ovid's recollection to see what the archetypal Athena's role in classical culture was.

Excellent! The way Hauser builds on previous scholarship to illuminate new ways to approach ancient history is intriguing. So grateful I was able to read an ARC of this book. Her chapter on Cassandra was particularly enlightening to my own research, and I look forward to seeing the ways in which other scholars engage with this book.

Even though I could barely understand what was going on in the book with my lack of knowledge about the subject (it is not exactly beginner friendly), I often think about what I could remember from the ancient literature course I took back in college years ago. I remember what happened to the characters inspired by their real life counterparts. But it's often from the Greeks' point of view and not often by women and people who didn't fit their mold. I wish I had a way to give it a better rating, but I can see how essential it is for the modern times and to give the women/people of the minority a voice in history.

Really strong premise, and I have enjoyed it thus far. The formatting on the online version that I got from Netgalley is a bit messed up though, which does take away from the reading experience a bit.

Penelope’s Bones is a stunning mix of mythology, history, and science that pulls you in from the very first page. The way the author brings ancient stories to life—through archaeology, legends, and a sharp scientific lens—feels both fresh and deeply rooted. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to look things up, not because you’re confused, but because it sparks your curiosity. The balance of imagination and research is pitch-perfect, making the past feel alive without losing any of its complexity.

What really makes this book shine, though, is how it tells the stories of so many different kinds of women. From noblewomen to enslaved girls, warriors to mothers, every woman feels fully human and important. The writing gives space to their struggles and strength without turning them into clichés. Even the most difficult topics, like sexual violence, are handled with care and respect—never brushed aside, but never used for shock value either. This is a powerful, thoughtful read that sticks with you long after you’ve finished.

I've been a fan of the Odyssey since I first discovered it on my grandfather's bookshelf when I was nine or ten. I loved it so much I immediately turned around and read it again. Over the decades, I've had fun diving into various translations. On the other hand, I struggle to appreciate The Iliad. So when I heard about this book I was very eager to read it, and wondered how my different reactions to the two stories would affect my appreciation of it. In the end, it didn't really matter if I was a fan or not, as each chapter stood on its own as a fascinating look into the Late Bronze Age and some of the women who lived then.

The books begins chronologically, with The Iliad. Each chapter is about a different woman referenced in the epics, beginning with a short dramatic retelling of the woman's role in the story. Then the reader is introduced to where and how the evidence relating to this type of woman was found. Some of these archaeological findings were quite dramatic in themselves, and they are a good way to begin describing why a certain artifact is significant.

There's so much in this book to absorb – including discussions of how Homer sought to explain cultural differences to listeners who had no concept of women wielding political power. The author looks at how masculine interpretations and translations by archaeologists have short-changed women in these epics, including sometimes physically "completing" statues and frescoes to fit their modern idea of what they should look like. She then offers solid evidence, not mere speculations, for the importance of women to the Late Bronze Age and Homer's stories.

I appreciated that the author was careful not to read too much into the latest discoveries, as there isn't a lot a lot of physical evidence for life in this time, especially about women and children. She does a good job helping the reader to interpret what we do know, without leaps of fancy being presented as facts.

This look at Homer doesn't shy away from the reality of women's powerlessness against slavery, rape, forced labor, etc. It points out, for example, that Nestor in The Iliad makes clear that the point of the Trojan war isn't just to get Helen back, but to rape as many "enemy" women as possible in revenge.

At the end of the chapters the author also talks about recent novels that retell these women's stories in fiction. And she relates these ancient women's issues to our own today. There are also some wonderful photographs scattered throughout the book, not all lumped at the end, which makes the reading richer.

I loved reading this book, learning so much and developing new ways of viewing the women in these epics. I'll be immediately rereading them and look forward to blending what I read here into those stories. This is a very accessible yet detailed look at what we know, think we know, and have no clue about, when it comes to the lives the of the types of women who inspired these classics. Whether you're a fan or not, if you have any interest in these topics at all, I recommend this highly.

Thank you to University of Chicago Press, the author and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book for review.

I enjoyed this tour through The Odyssey via archaeological research, or perhaps it is vice versa, although it does drag on a bit at the end with the same formula for each chapter and some of the connections between text and findings is thin. Readers will appreciate the more direct connections Hauser can make between the Odyssey's events, descriptions, and details and archaeological finds from ancient Greece and its environs. She's excellent at teasing out the elements of feminist history that have been overshadowed or deliberately ignored in the record, such as the masses of women who were enslaved, catalogued in Linear B; how weaving and spinning and dyeing was done, as attested to from a site on Crete; and how and why DNA and other evidence is offering new interpretations of old finds. This would be a great companion read to Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey or related works for book groups.

Intriguing book with an unusual direction which separates it out from the myriad analyses of Homer's epics that already exist. An exploration of these known works through the eyes of the women who are often sidelined in masculine focused work. The clarity of the chronology of the archaeological work along with the literary backdrop is fascinating. Of note, this book is likely to be most interesting for people at least moderately familiar with the Iliad and Odyssey as this not a translation and assumes some knowledge of the characters and overall story (I suppose it could be enjoyed without the knowledge but I feel the reader may lose a little bit).

thank you to netgalley for providing this epup arc, and thank you to the author and the publisher as well. my opinion remains my own.

what you will find here is a completely indulgent and informative book full of extremely well researched lore and mythos. it is a bit dry but i felt captivated by the stories. this was a fun and unique dive into greek mythos. i highly recommend this for the history buffs, those who want a project book with good pay off and those researching feminist history. it was fabulous.

I enjoyed using different forms of archaeology to help map the stories of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the women within their lines. I learned a lot about different archaeological methods I had never heard of before. As well as civilizations and rulers that are not mentioned as often.

My main problem with this book was how often the author brought up her own books. I liked the references to other authors, but when she talked about her own, it felt like shameless self-promo. Some of the story is very dense and dry, making those chapters hard to read.

so excellent. hauser is clearly well researched; she has INCREDIBLE knowledge about each figure in this book. the maps, images, archeological evidence, etc. were all very useful in my understanding of them. here are some other aspects i thought were great:

- loved the short excepts hauser included in the beginning of each chapter! it's clear hauser has a background in writing historical fiction, and i think this puts her in the ranks of miller, saint, etc., as she employs an oppositional gaze towards both myth and history's portrayal of these iconic women.
- building on that point, i thought it was pretty cool that hauser pulled not just from historical sources but also contemporary poets and authors to illustrate her ideas (in her discussion of pasiphae, for example). there's an appreciation for her peers that i thought was quite beautiful.

all in all, a great book! i really feel like i learned so much about these figures (some of which i knew about, and some that i didn't!) i might even be convinced to pick up the golden apple trilogy next. love it <3

Hauser's ambitious assessment of the women in Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey weaves together contemporary archeological findings with an insightful reading of the hidden depths of female figures who are more often silent and spoken for in the sagas. By attending to each portrayal in turn--from the well-known Helen to the recently recuperated Briseis, alongside Cassandra, Athena, Penelope, and a host of others--Hauser argues that we are in a position to better understand the status of women in the ancient world. This includes, tragically, their vulnerability to enslavement and, effectively, trafficking between men, and Hauser looks at how sexual violence is both intimated and explicitly revealed in the Homeric poems.

This is a book that both specialists and non-specialists will find appealing, because Hauser's prose style is accessible but her research is impeccable. This is feminist analysis, not revisionism, and it contributes a scholarly perspective to the growing number of fictional revisions of the women of Greek myth, including in Hauser's own trilogy.

My only quibble is that sometimes the suggestive archeological and scientific data seems to be a bit tacked on to the literary analysis.

I am a historian who went through many many courses on the Ancient Greeks and their stories and myths and never have I come across a book with so much focus, detail, and information on the women of Greece. I love reading retellings on the Ancient Greek myths because the original stories are always so hyper-focused on how great the men are and how awful the women are. This book gives me hope that such courses on the Greeks will include better information about the women of Ancient Greece.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this!

"So, Muse: tell me about a woman."

With this inversion of Homer's famous invocation, Emily Hauser sets the tone for "Penelope's Bones," a work that dares to center women not as literary devices or symbolic placeholders but as historical agents whose lives shaped and were shaped by the world behind Homer's epics. Hauser's aim is not to embellish or fictionalize; instead, she anchors her inquiry in hard evidence, pulling from archaeology, ancient DNA analysis, and literary criticism to recover the lived realities of women in the Late Bronze Age. This is not mythologizing; this is historical reconstitution.

For readers who assume this is another fictional reimagining of the Homeric world, it is not. Penelope's Bones is nonfiction, through and through. Its narrative is guided not by invention but by inquiry, and its revelations come from imaginative flourish and painstaking research. It is quite deliberately a reckoning with Homer, history, and the stories we have too long told at women's expense.

Hauser argues that women are indispensable, not peripheral, to the Iliad and Odyssey. Helen, Briseis, Hecuba, and Penelope are not background figures. They are narrative catalysts, cultural symbols, and historical enigmas worth serious scholarly attention. The book turns traditional Homeric interpretation on its head: instead of using the epics to illuminate the past, Hauser uses what we know of the past, from skeletal remains to palace tablets, to interrogate Homer. She challenges the long-standing literary and historical practice of relegating women to the margins of myth and memory.

The scope of the book is impressively wide-ranging. Hauser moves fluidly between discussions of Bronze Age political structures and the mechanics of international trade, from the intricacies of Linear B tablets to the spiritual roles of goddesses like Thetis and Athena. She draws from Mycenaean grave goods, Hittite diplomatic letters, shipwrecks, and isotopic bone data to reconstruct ancient women's material and social lives. Themes of war, slavery, kinship, inheritance, and cultural exchange are threaded through each chapter, with mythic figures serving as gateways into broader historical realities. Framed around individual women from Homer's epics, the book's organization grounds this interdisciplinary sweep in human stories, giving the reader a point of emotional and intellectual entry into each new domain of inquiry.

One of the book's most sobering and original contributions lies in its discussion of malnutrition among women in the Bronze Age Aegean, a subject Hauser handles with rigor and empathy. She presents a picture of widespread, systemic nutritional inequality by drawing on skeletal analysis, isotopic data, and administrative records from Linear B tablets. Women, particularly those enslaved or of lower status, were consistently underfed relative to men. This disparity left visible traces on their bones and teeth, from enamel hypoplasia to pelvic deformation. The consequences were harrowing: a narrowed pelvic structure, the result of childhood malnourishment, drastically increased the risk of death in childbirth. This biological fragility, coupled with social expectations of repeated pregnancies, created a deadly feedback loop. Hauser presents this as a parallel to the glorified deaths of men in battle, except here, the battlefield is the domestic sphere, and the death toll is quiet, private, and largely erased. It's one of the book's most potent arguments: that silence, too, is a form of historical violence.

Throughout, Hauser resists the temptation to romanticize the past. Her feminist lens is clear, but so is her historical discipline. She acknowledges where the evidence is fragmentary, where interpretations must remain speculative. Still, the interdisciplinary breadth of her research—combining archaeological data, literary analysis, and cutting-edge genetics, grounds her narrative in substance rather than sentiment. The result is a book that asks urgent questions about how we read ancient texts and the priorities and prejudices of the cultures that have shaped their interpretation.

At a time when the politics of storytelling are under intense scrutiny, "Penelope's Bones" offers both a challenge to inherited narratives and a blueprint for reimagining them. Hauser doesn't simply retell old tales; she interrogates the conditions that shaped them and the ideologies that preserved them. Penelope's Bones doesn't just reframe the Homeric world; it reclaims it.

This review is of an advance reader copy provided by NetGalley and University of Chicago Press.