Os Amores de Safo

by Erica Jong

Os Amores de Safo é uma viagem no tempo de 2600 anos, transportando o leitor para os lugares mais recônditos da mente da poeta que cantou o amor de forma inigualável. Aos catorze anos, Safo é seduzida pelo belo poeta Alceu, e envolve-se numa perigosa conspiração para derrubar o ditador da sua ilha. A conspiração é descoberta, e Safo vê-se obrigada a casar com um repelente homem mais velho, na esperança de que o matrimónio a proteja de problemas. Em vez disso, esta infeliz união inicia-a numa série de aventuras amorosas, levando-a de Delfos ao Egipto, à Terra das Amazonas e ao sombrio reino de Hades. Durante as suas viagens, Safo dá à luz e perde uma filha, torna-se a rapsoda mais famosa do mundo antigo e aprende a compreender as forças que moldaram a sua vida.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Poetry, Historical, LGBT, Mythology, Queer

351 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Erica Jong—novelist, poet, and essayist—has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. She has published 21 books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, the Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue, and the New York Times Book Review.

In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels—How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels—Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap—she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. A memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. Erica’s latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.

Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island.

Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.

A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica’s archival material was acquired by Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers’ archives.

Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I’m happy,” Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.

Reviews

[Eli · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews but if I can keep someone from reading this it’ll be worth it.

This book is an insult to Sappho’s memory. Not only because it revolves around Sappho moping around for Alcaeus (and don’t get me wrong, that was also ridiculous) but mostly because it’s very poorly written. The writing is inexcusably bad.

The ‘erotic’ scenes made me nauseous and the romance was dull, rushed, and boring. Sappho and Alcaeus have insta-love and there is no reason given for them to love each other. The central themes of Alcaeus’s poems/songs are his political beliefs, war, and drinking. Sappho’s main themes are love and women. What drives them together? Erica Jong doesn’t know and neither will you. But you’ll be forced to listen to her whine about missing him, even though he’s an unappealing asshole.

Unless you understand the history of men undermining Sappho’s sexuality, you may not get why I’m so offended by the plot of this book. Jong has Sappho marry Cercylas of Andros despite the general consensus of modern scholars who acknowledge that the name was a pun meant to make fun of Sappho’s lesbianism (Cercylas is slang for male genitalia and Andros means man, ie Dick of Man Island). The existence of Phaon is laughable as it was only mentioned in dramaticized versions of Sappho’s life to consolidate her attraction to women with a fatal frenzied love for some man that drove her to suicide. Her relationship with Alcaeus was only rumored hundreds of years after her death because they lived in the same place at the same time. It seems Jong wanted to write a straight romance set in Ancient Greece, but couldn’t she have picked someone else if that’s what she wanted? Why bring Aesop into this? It’s so bizarre.

Of Sappho’s surviving poetry, she only names women as lovers. It seems Jong didn’t read any Sappho. Where is Atthis, Gongyla, Anactoria, Abanthis, etc etc? She makes up an enslaved woman as Sappho’s brief romance and leaves it at that. Sappho writes extensively for her love for a woman named Atthis, who was her childhood friend and subject of many poems. She’s reduced to one of Sappho’s sexual exploits. Jong doesn’t care though. It must be sexier to replace Atthis with Alcaeus to her.

I would forgive the creative freedoms she took if the writing or characterization was any good, but it’s not. The narrator, a middle-aged Sappho, never explains anything while skipping from topic to topic. The plot makes no sense. Jong must have looked up interesting places and things in Archaic Greece and just stitched them together with loose connectors. The plot makes no sense and does no hommage to Sappho’s poetry. Jong must have thought Ancient Egypt would be sexy so she needed that in her plot too. None of it makes sense.

She also has Sappho put down other women in a very problematic way. Jong was a prominent second wave feminist in the 70s but seems to have not matured past putting down feminine women who like nice things. I’d like to show her several poems where Sappho talks about wanting certain fashionable clothes and fawns over well-dressed women.

At least Jong did some research on Pittacus and the politics of Mytilene, not that it’s well-written or explained coherently.

Don’t read this if you’re gay, smart, or both. It belongs in a supermarket with a shirtless man with glistening abs on the cover. Also, she calls female genitalia a “delta”, which I can’t read with a straight face.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. I don't quite know what to say about this book. I am very conflicted because although I found the book pretty terrible in execution, the content and imagery was mesmerizing and I found myself finishing the book while shaking my head in disbelief the entire time. The dialogue was odd and unnatural. There were times where I chuckled to myself imagining the characters actually speaking those words aloud to each other. There was also a lot of repitition and reiteration throughout the book. Could she not think of a single other term for a woman's genitalia other than "delta"? She would literally say the same thing four different ways on a single page. Another thing that had my head spinning was how parts of the story that seemed to hold a lot of weight were grazed over in such a way that I constantly felt like I had missed something, even though I had been reading page-by-page. There would be a full-page description of what the island looked like with a mere sentence explaining the disasterous voyage it took to get there.

Having said all of that, however, I have restate that I finished the book even though I didn't know why. The characters were strong and the adventures were marvelous- even though they were confusing and didn't flow very well. I finished the book and felt like I needed to process the experience and detach myself from Sappho's journey and experiences. And what a character Sappho is! Vulnerable, passionate, emotional, obstinate.. she was beautifully imperfect and strong and as much as she irritated me, I found her fascinating and beautiful.

This is the first novel I have read by Erica Jong and I've got to say, I really expected more from her. Maybe I should have started with Fear of Flying?

[Noella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Het boek begon goed, ik kon goed in het verhaal komen, maar na een tijd werd het me wat te mythologisch, vanaf bladzijde 220 ongeveer. Het stuk van de 'odyssee' van Sappho las ik niet zo graag, ik werd het eigenlijk echt beu. Maar omdat het korte hoofdstukken zijn, was het toch ook niet zo moeilijk om door te lezen. En daarna werd het weer beter, vanaf het gedeelte dat Sappho terug thuis was. Al met al vond ik het geen slecht verhaal, en ik ben blij dat ik doorgezet heb.
Drie sterren.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

this was so bad!! 2 main reasons:

1) most of sappho's relationships in this book (platonic as well as romantic!) are with men. sappho may have loved men, but loving women was a central theme in her life and legacy. to have her pine over one man for the entirety of the book is honestly offensive! as she goes through trials and tribulations she thinks only of him. the relationships sappho does have with women are much less central to the book. there is mention of her being involved with praxinoa, a girl who has been her slave since childhood, but it's written as more of a friends-with-benefits type deal, or of girls who grew up together experimenting more than any real romance. the only romantic relationship sappho really has with a woman is with a priestess isis, and that ends in a major betrayal. sappho's platonic family relationships are also troubled - she does not get along well with her mother, her daughter, or her sister in law. i found a lot of internalized misogyny in the way sappho interacted with and thought of other women that was honestly crushing. does erica jong really think so little of her own gender? this book was an insult to sappho's memory. finally, to have sappho end up living on an island, happily ever after, with alcaeus and aesop was crushing! sappho is known for her love of women, not of her domestic desire for men.

2) bad writing. the prose itself was just not good. I also found the characters to be really one-dimensional, especially the antagonists (especially rhodopis). no one really changed or grew throughout the book other than sappho. the ending also felt very rushed, and not really connected to the rest of the story. phaon came out of nowhere, and the idea that sappho was so distraught over what he did that she would contemplate suicide? after all that she had been through, all the time she spent pining over alcaeus? just unrealistic. again in terms of writing style: nothing was done subtly at all. i especially hated the way the author talked about aesop and his fables. very heavy-handed. also, the book felt very didactic, like erica jong was trying to teach me about ancient greece rather than write a compelling novel. there was also a lot of repetition, and a lot of plainly stating emotions instead of leaving the reader to infer.

based on the cover and title of this book i had high hopes for this book but it did not deliver! i think there were some beautifully constructed individual phrases but i found most of this book to be poorly written and a disappointment to sappho's memory.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long ago and far away when something Lesbian meant it was from the isle of Lesbos there lived a famed poet and songstress Sappho. So scant are the actual facts about her life, it's an author's ideal playpen. Though one may muse on just how much of the author herself gets imprinted on these biointerpretations. Jong, herself a poet of some renown (so much so that she included a sizeble addition of her own Sappho style poems into the book), and now stranger to writing on sexuality, women's paths, etc. creates a Sappho who is compelling, brave, outspoken, adaptable and distinctly (considering her fame) hetero inclined and not altogether all that much of a feminist. Which isn't to say she doesn't play around, she does, prolifically so. So much so that one must make a conscientious effort to discard our semipuritan mentality in favor on the ancient world's barely pubescent age of consent and rampant bisexuality for all. Sappho is, above all, a servant of Aphrodite, and as such she preaches love, love, LOVE (alongside a sizable helping of pleasure) in life and song. It's an interestingly constructed book, starting off as a regular historical fiction and then, as Sappho goes on her very own odyssey, throwing in adventures of mythological proportion. Subsequently upon her return to Lesbos, once again historical fiction and then pure imagination land ending. It works in its own way, precisely because of the aforementioned scarcity of facts. Sort of a magical biography. I didn't love the book, but I did enjoy mostly. The writing was as frou frou as a book about poetry would have. It is as mentioned quite hetero inclined, which might be just the author's take. I'm not even sure I loved the Jongian interpretation of the main character. It read oddly longer than the page count suggested. But it was original and imaginative and a pretty entertaining romp throughout the antiquity. Interestingly enough the terms lesbian and saphhic weren't used in the way we've come to know them until 1890s, hundreds of repressed years later. What a world.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Since I'm a huge fan of mythology I cannot give this book less than 3.5 stars for its mythological aspects.
However, the book was boring at times and some parts were honestly sickening but nothing else is to be expected from the Greek gods.

[Andrew Reeves · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always been a fan of Greek mythology. Although I'd never heard of Sappho until discovering this novel more than a year ago, I've come to appreciate the attention Jong gives to Sappho's life and poetry.

The novel moves quickly and is just what I've come to expect from this author's writing. The prose is witty, sensual and retrospective as the protagonist laments the taking of her daughter while longing for the embrace of her lover. Imagery describing the Greek isle of Lesbos and other locales is exquisite and alluring.

Jong's Sappho undergoes differing degrees of change from the time she departs her native island to the conclusion of the novel. The beginning of the story finds Sappho precocious, albeit extremely naive. The circumstances she encounters - nearly losing her life from shipwreck, landing in the domain of the amazons, braving Hades' domain - teach her about herself and the ever changing world in which she lives. These lessons give Sappho a wisdom she would not have otherwise attained. This wisdom becomes a vital asset in the final chapters as she must once again navigate the precarious terrain of new love while struggling to mend relations with her daughter and instruct young, eager students.

The conclusion leaves the reader with a question, one it seems Jong attempts to answer throughout the whole of the book. Do human beings decide their own fate? Or, are they subjected solely to the whims of some fickle higher power? Jong leaves this question unanswered.

I selected this book to read as part of my "research" for a current novella project. I was looking for novels with a strong female lead. This book certainly fits the bill. What makes it more spectacular is the fact that, despite its intrinsically feminine angle, Sappho is almost completely inundated by the presence of men. Whether the memory of her dead father or the company of Aesop the fable-maker, Sappho must define her own existence separate from the constant influence of men. For this reason, I found this book an excellent tool for my "research".

I would encourage the male reader not to shy away from this book, despite its feminine qualities. If Erica Jong excels at anything, it is writing a universal character whose application crosses the boundaries of sex, social opinion, and religious predisposition. It is a profound piece of work.

[Mo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard one to review. I found Sappho's Leap to be poorly executed. The characters and their actions make no sense. The dialogue is horribly stilted. The plot is meandering - maybe picaresque would be a kinder word. In fact, the whole thing feels rather like a comedy, one of those old-fashioned comedies from another literary era where culture has changed too much for you to appreciate the jokes even though you know they're supposed to be funny. And yet, I kind of grew to like it. I enjoyed the adventures of all these foolish humans (and part-humans) and their dumb choices. Jong's prose has moments of pithy beauty in the midst of Sappho's comic-erotic odyssey. Maybe this is what humanity looks like from a god's eye view: silly, but endearing, and somehow moving in its silliness. I suspect if I give this another shot, with different expectations next time, I might like it more.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this are very good, but I have to confess that Jong lost me when the story turns fantastical - it was going along nicely with the straightforward historical with light mythological overtones, so the turnoff to head into the underworld is a sharp one. I'm fine with either one, the other, or both interwoven smoothly; slapping the concepts together like a poorly made layer cake is less fine.

[Monica. A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completamente a digiuno sull'argomento mi sono immersa nella storia senza pormi domande, è un libro che si legge più come un romanzo di fantasia o una bellissima fiaba che come una biografia romanzata.
Mi sono ritrovata un po' bambina e, approdando sull'isola delle amazzoni, dei centauri e delle sirene, ho incontranto miti e leggende durante questa versione al femminile del'Odissea senza mai mettere in dubbio la loro autenticità come non mi capitava da molto tempo.
Della sua storia si sa poco e niente, partendo da poche fonti certe l'autrice ha inventato totalmente una storia iniziando dalla sua infanzia e dal rapporto con la sua schiava Prassinoa e passando attraverso la sua relazione con il poeta Alceo per finire poi sulla rupe dalla quale si dice si sia gettata per amore di un giovane barcaiolo.
La dea Afrodite, sempre presente nei suoi canti, compare anche qui in compagnia di Zeus, entrambi si dilettano a far affrontare nuove prove alla poetessa, come due burattinai manovrano i poveri umani dall'alto e governano le loro vite.

Mortali immortali, immortali mortali,
Che vivono la morte e muoiono la vita.
Eraclito

Il libro inzia con Saffo sulla rupre e avrei gradito che terminasse con il salto, un'improbabile lieto fine ha rovinato tutto.

[Mel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Upon discussion with friends and through perusing way more reader reviews on this website than I have time for, it has been decided that Erica Jong is a genius-- but only her early years.

Erica Jong's ability to wield words like a sword is incredible. Her poetry is magnificent (my next tattoo will most likely be one of her verses, if that says anything) and I adore her. But I realized that most of my experience with her (prior to Sappho's Leap) was all her early work. Something happened to her writing over the past two decades that I can't exactly pinpoint, but it's just off.

This novel is a joke. The phrases used, the way the words are assembled, the characters that you never actually care for-- all of it. I was mightily disappointed to say the least. For being rooted in ancient mythology and history, the verbiage and language just doesn't match. The descriptions are redundant and the same adjective is used in the same paragraph (a personal pet peeve) multiple times. The idea is good, the story is moderately creative and it involves underworlds and goddesses so it isn't all terrible; but for Jong, it's real bad. This novel was so under par for her that I may reconsider her status as one of my favorite modern poets. *Gasp!* Maybe...I don't know. I can be forgiving sometimes. :)

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! I have read it several times now and am always transported by the mixture of the mythical and the personal. It describes the whole trajectory of Saphos life of which little is known. This fact has left the author a lot of space to play in and she does so with humour and a deep insight into human nature.

[Czytam Sercem]

Odnotowuję jako przeczytaną, znowu bez gwiazdek. Będę musiała nieźle się nagłowić, co napisać na Instagramie, bo zrobiłam bardzo ładne zdjęcie i nie chcę, żeby przepadło 🙃

[Eush Maloosh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was queerbaited lol.

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so old that when I was in college, UNC-CH had a Classics Department (They still do.) and people even chose Classics as a major! As a sophomore I took “Latin Literature in Translation” and “Greek Literature in Translation.” Both classes were taught by Dr. Kenneth J. Reckford, a renowned scholar and one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had. Among others we read Homer, Pindar, Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Ovid, Cicero, Virgil, and Catullus. For a naïve boy from a small Sandhills town, this was quite an awakening. One of the biggest revelations was seeing that people are just as wise/stupid, honorable/despicable, greedy/generous (pick whatever other pairs you wish) today as they were two or three thousand years ago. Sappho’s Leap by Erica Jong is a novelization of the life of the poetess Sappho who lived on the island of Lesbos in the Sixth Century B.C.E. Sappho is a primal source for the metaphors of all love poetry. This is not a biography because very few facts are known about Sappho. We know that she was a real person and she wrote poetry but beyond that what is left is mostly myth. This works beautifully for Jong. In Sappho’s Leap she adopts an episodic narrative style that is truly classic. The plot is broad and epic in scope. The characters, including Aesop, Aphrodite and Zeus and Phaon are imbued with classic, mythic traits. Each chapter begins with Jong’s translations of fragments from Sappho as well as the Oracle of Delphi, Aesop, Homer, Heraclitus, The Amazoniad among others. The last section of the novel is a collection of poems by Jong in the classic Sapphic style. As I read this book I was taken back forty-eight years in time to when I was transfixed while reading Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey. One can often derive pleasure from reading. Then, occasionally, one can be deeply affected by the power of literature.

[Alicia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ohmygod. And here's the 2nd book I've given up on within 20 pages: in the last 5 years, that's happened only twice - and both in this week. Jong is a wildly uneven writer. Her heyday was the late-70s and she was truly a groundbreaking, explicit - & unusually accessible - literary novelist. Now, not so much. The very promising prologue of Sappho as an old woman, standing upon the cliffs reviewing her life in preparation for hurling herself into the sea, gave me false hope that died with the 1st chapter. How you make the life of the greatest love poet of four millenia boring - & the world she lived in two dimensional - I have no idea.

[David]

I associate the cover picture with Tanith Lee's Vivia.

[Andrew Einspruch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with this a bit. Enjoyed it enough to finish it, but not my favourite of Jong's books.

[Erik B.K.K. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Straight-washing trash.

[Ronny De Schepper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Op zestigjarige leeftijd schreef Erica Jong “Sappho’s leap”, alweer een picareske roman met een seksueel gulzige heldin. En het autobiografische karakter is weer niet ver weg. In de proloog schrijft ze: “In het verleden was het de charme van de jeugd waar ik wonderen mee verrichtte. Nu met de charme van de roem.” Aan het woord is Sappho, maar het mag duidelijk zijn dat Jong door haar mond spreekt. Die proloog situeert zich overigens op het klif van waar Sappho zich volgens de legende te pletter stortte “uit liefde voor een knappe jonge veerman”. Want Sappho mag dan nog haar naam hebben gegeven aan de vrouwenliefde, ook van mannen was ze niet vies. “Hield ik van vrouwen of van mannen? Of van beiden? Heeft de liefde wel een geslacht? Ik betwijfel het. Als je het geluk hebt te beminnen, wat kan het je dan schelen met welk vlees je geliefde is bekleed?” Ook hier heb ik weer de indruk dat de personae van Sappho en Jong over elkaar schuiven.

[Nora Rawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admire the genesis of this (take the legend of Sappho and make her into an Odysseus type adventurer), but the tour through the ancient world just felt rote, and while I suppose I appreciate the embrace of a non-puritanical sexual worldview, I didn't find anything in these to have any life. It was too much like reading someone's thought exercise.

[Eden Kaufman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting take on the power and influence of female sexuality and pleasure. I wouldn't describe this book as sexy as much as it is thought-provoking, refreshing, and ultimately a little sad. Highly recommend!

[Kostas Kanellopoulos · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Tο άλμα της Σαπφούς" είναι μια ομηρικης έμπνευσης Σαπφειάδα... Καλύτερες στιγμές της παρέα με τον Αίσωπο

[Lin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A female odyssey- full of love and def lots more sex than the one we are familiar with.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Erica Jong pays homage to the first great female poet of our Western culture and, although there are not many solid facts concerning Sappho´s life, the author weaves a curious tale, which seems to find inspiration in the epic tales of the Greek.

Since an early age, Sappho knows that her life purpose is to sing the glory of Aphrodite. Completely fascinated with the works (and charm) of the poet Alcaeus, she finds herself in the middle of a rebellion to overthrow the dictator of her home island, Lesbos. The coup goes wrong and the two lovers are separated: Alcaeus is banished forever from the land and Sappho must marry an old merchant. The young poet never forgets her first love and, after the death of her husband, starts a journey to find her lover, which will lead her to the ancient oracle of Delphi, the land of the pharaohs and the mythical realms of the Amazons and Centaurs, with a brief stop at Hade´s underworld.

The structure of the book reminds me of the classical works of Homer and Virgil – there is a hero, who has to go on a very long journey and faces lots of perils, many of which are created by the gods. During the story, the main character is constantly praised for his/her achievements and, in the end, gets the most desired prize – a name in History!

Erica Jong´s Sappho is portrayed as a true feminist, who wants to be free of all moral constraints when it comes to love, sexuality and the typical female roles, in general. But, although she is quite spirited in the first half of the book, she starts losing her spark as her journey proceeds to different lands and, in the last part of the story, she just seems to be your normal romantic character, constantly pining over her lost love. Therefore, what seemed to be a 5 star read in the beginning just went falling down the hill and I cannot give more than a 3 star rating. I really enjoyed the mix of History and Mythology – the stop in the land of the Amazons is quite fascinating – but Sappho´s evolution as a character is just disappointing.

[Alberteinsteinmaloney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erica Jong's novel retains just enough ancient history and philosophy to prevent it from teetering into either florid romance novel or purely pornographic fluff. Although thoroughly enjoyable, the novel falls short of greatness on several levels, most disturbingly so when the tone morphs out of Sappho's own and becomes disturbingly modernistic.

That said, there were many strengths to the novel and Sappho herself is fabulously imagined. Far from historical fiction, the novel was wonderfully autobiographical in that many loose ends, as in life, were never tied up. We are left wondering about the Pharaoh, Isis, and a bevy of other scintillating characters who simply disappear from the story. Although I was left initially unsatisfied, this ended up being the most realistic part of the story to me.

The Leap itself was chilling; I imagined the entire novel from this vantage point, poised recklessly at the edge of mortality. I am not sure we the readers must even believe that Sappho survived the fall and, rescued by her three true friends, went to live amongst the Amazons and Centaurs. More plausibly could these dreams, this perfection, have come about as Sappho plummeted and drowned? Clearly, the epilogue reveals Jong's disagreement with me on this issue, although I do feel the novel might have been stronger without the fairy tale ending.

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,600 years ago on the island of Lesbos in the great age when trade blossomed in the eastern Mediterranean there lived an actual woman who's songs survive to this day - on scraps of parchment and in the legends passed on through the ages. Sappho was known throughout this ancient world and her songs say much about the unchanging nature of love and lust, of power and wisdom. Jong has researched her character well and has woven a story of her life that is compelling and informative. How this woman could have attained such fame and power in a world generally misogynist in the time of the building of the great sphinx's of Egypt, the advent of the great city states like Sparta and Athens, when learned men traveled to the oracle at Delphi to sort out truths from the myriad of gods and goddesses of the region is a compelling mystery and Jong does an admirable job weaving plausible truth from this time straddling the modern world and pre-history.

"I think of all the daughters who died in childbirth, all the granddaughters who died trying to come into this world of darkness and light - and I rejoice for you - despite the treachery of men...It is not so bad - this gift the gods gave us. It is a mixture of pain and pleasure, of sweets and bitters, like all gifts, but it is our to keep awhile and revel in."

[Phyllis Macy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this exploration of Sappho's life. I thought Jong brought Sappho and her friends and family to life in a believable and realistic way, and the novel felt to me similar to the epic nature of Greek myth and verse. It wasn't the best novel I've ever read, but it was a lovely escape and I enjoyed learning more about Sappho.

[IV · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is about to put me back in a reading slump.

With the resurgence of Madeline Miller's stories I have been on the hunt for more clever retellings of mythological stories and historical figures from around the same era, and I thought this one would be perfect. I had recently included references to Sappho's poems in my college admissions essays and was infatuated with stories about her native island of Lesbos, and I was very excited to read a story promising to fill in all the gaps in books and wikipedia pages. So I hate to say that when I closed the book, I did so with the most immense disappointment.

#1 The rough timeline
I did not like the story from the get go. Sappho's monologue on the cliff is meant to spark attention: A list of reasons a woman is about to die, making you want to read further to understand the stories behind it. But it was too revealing. She talks about her fame, her rumoured love for Phaeon, her daughter, her commitment to Aphrodite, her time spent in Egypt, her love affairs with Isis, the Pharaoh and Alcaeus and Praxinoa, effectively everything, before we even get into the official story. I hate knowing everything that is going to happen instead of getting to discover a new layer chapter by chapter. Even in stories like The Song of Achilles a retelling of an Epic most people know the ending to, there is colorful language and masterful characterization that makes it compelling, something this story does not have.

Secondly, the speed at which the story moves as well as the transitions are extremely awkward. She speaks about her father's love for her and then boom, he is dead. Within ten pages her mother has run to Pittacus, whose tyrannical reign could have been an interesting plot point but is reduced to a love interest for her mother, she meets Alcaeus, solidifies the first of her fame, leaves to exile with Alcaeus , falls in love, jumps ship, is rescued, and immediately married to Cercylas. This is all mashed together in such a fast medley that none of the individual pieces of information have time to sink in.

Later when Sappho is island hopping there is a common trend of ships wrecking, chaotic stays and their inevitable rescue that becomes incredibly boring due to the sheer number of times it happens. I found that I didn't care about her meeting Aesop and the Pharaoh or her time with the Amazons or centaurs, or the school she opened for girls, because none of those things were explored past the surface level, and frankly, it takes effort to make such gradiose events so boring, and I really wish that instead of trying to check every exotic location off a list, Jong had taken the time to isolate the story to a few places and really develop the characters and conflicts that came with each one. That, or make the story longer to accommodate all the things she clearly wanted to happen.

#2 Language
I briefly touched on how a retelling can be made interesting through language, and this book fails on every account of trying to read it. Everything felt very stilted and formal in a way that the dialogue was as suited to this time period as much as any other up to the nineteenth century.

I also take issue with the strange sexualization of everything. I understand that this is a story that heavily involves belief in Aphrodite and sexual healing, as well as the love affairs of a grown woman, but sometimes the sexual remarks and innuendos felt shoehorned in as a lazy reference to Jong's imagination of ancient Greece rather than anything that added to the story. I particularly feel that the descriptions of children were unnecessarily sexual. Take these quotes:

"Her sea-blue eyes blurrily sought out mine. Her little sex a pale pink shell."

"A little boy whose tender phallus would come to overmaster him and guide his fate."

"I was always glad I had borne a daughter. Her beauty and fragility never ceased to stir me in that secret place where fear and desire mingle."

All of these are descriptions of children, as young as her own newborn daughter. Not the fourteen year olds who were expected to get married at that time. Literal babies. And what was the point of describing them like that and putting their genitalia before their character and physical appearance? I see no reason this should have happened, and it's weird.

#3: Straightwashing, and Sappho's Relationships

It is still debated among historians whether or not Sappho was really a lesbian, but with heaps of evidence pointing to her lifelong love of women, it strikes me as a strange choice to make a man her soulmate and another man her downfall. Her love affairs with women also rely on problematic stereotypes: The weird power dynamic of the relationship between her and her lifelong servant that is isolated to sex rather than to any emotional attachment, Isis assaulting her, and her entering sexual relationships with multiple young students whom she had known since they were babies raised by their Amazon mothers after their flight from the island.

Sappho's male love interests are portrayed as better, but I don't buy it. Sappho spends more than half her life chasing Alcaeus, and when she dies, it is his arms she is reunited with. All because they went into exile together and knew one another for all of two weeks. He is the father of her child, but she never tells him that, and they never share any kind of bond over it. Phaeon is not meant to be a good love interest, but I do not think his actions were compelling enough to get Sappho to kill herself. This retelling deserved a cohesive and present love interest, and fewer bad side flings.

Conclusion

This book was boring and moved slowly despite the amount of events crammed into it, and I couldn't get personally attached to any of the plots or characters. The progression of time didn't feel well-executed and I found myself thinking Sappho and everyone around her was insufferable. She deserves a better retelling than this.

[sheena d! · Rating 3 out of 5]

oh shit. good reads (or i) just deleted my entire crap review.

can i be bothered to rewrite?
meh.

this book isn't as bad as other reviewers are saying. no, it won't save your life. but it does offer a cute glimpse at the life of an icon, and given that so little is known about sappho, i'm impressed with jong's tale.

we see sappho grow up and hear some humorous dialogue between zeus and aphrodite. it's worth the couple of hours it will take you to read, and offers a pleasant, although not life-altering, escape from this world.