Beauty’s Daughter by Carolyn Meyer - OPTIONAL

Beauty’s Daughter, by Carolyn Meyer, 337 pages. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. $16.99. 

Language G; Mature Content PG 13; Violence PG 13

HS – OPTIONAL

In ancient Greece, Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus, king of Sparta, and Helen, the queen (later Helen of Troy), begins her story.

King Menelaus is called away from his kingdom to a distant country and while he is gone his wife, Helen, falls madly in love with Prince Paris and sails off with him to Troy, leaving Hermione behind to fend for herself.   When the king returns and finds his wife and much of his royal treasure gone, he gathers an army of a thousand ships and sets sail to reclaim his wife and treasure. 10yo Hermione does not want to be left behind and stows away on one of the ships carrying concubines and servants. She is there for what will become the ten-year Trojan War. Hermione changes and matures into a striking young woman as she grows up among the soldiers and around the death that accompanies war.  She falls in love with Orestes, a soldier of royal birth. They pledge their love and vow to marry when the war is over.  However, her parents have other plans for her and marry her off to a famous warrior who she despises. The remainder of the book is the attempt by Hermione and Orestes to find one another under extremely difficult circumstances.

How does it feel to be the daughter of the most beautiful woman in the world? Beauty’s Daughter is that story.  I was intrigued by the idea that the story would be told from the viewpoint of Helen’s daughter, a lesser-known Greek character.  However, I tired of trying to keep track of all the Greek characters and who was killing whose sister, mother, father, and with whom the Gods chose to intervene.  So much time was spent describing the complexities of Greek mythology that it didn’t have time to fully develop the characters.  There is violence, and a rape, prostitution, concubines, and other sexual situations, which though not explicit are still there. I realize this is in keeping with Greek mythology, but is a warning for younger readers. 

Reviewer: J. Truman, High School Media Teacher