Sweetbitter Song
One evening, a nine-year-old slave girl named Melantho meets ten-year-old Princess Penelope, and from that moment on, they are inseparable … until Penelope’s family learns of the friendship and Melantho suffers brutal consequences. Years later, amid the arrival of suitors hoping to be chosen as husband to Penelope’s cousin, Helen, they meet again. However, Melantho’s resentment over both her punishment and Penelope’s silence afterward still lingers. When Melantho and her brother are caught attempting an escape, Penelope saves Melantho from a terrible punishment. Yet Melantho can’t help questioning Penelope’s motives—was this recent rescue born of guilt or is there something deeper between them that neither one can yet name?
Readers should note this sapphic retelling diverges sharply from The Odyssey. Instead of portraying Penelope as a maternal figure to a much younger Melantho, the novel reimagines them as near contemporaries and as romantic partners. Ultimately, bringing the handmaids (including Melantho) closer to Penelope’s age strengthens both the narrative and the characters’ development. As Penelope sees the mistakes Helen and Clytemnestra make in their circles of influence, she increasingly relies on the women around her when governing Ithaca. While casting hot‑tempered Melantho as a similarly aged counterpoint to Penelope’s measured calm may prove divisive for some readers, I found the contrast effective.
Sweetbitter Song explores a powerful friendship amidst life in Ithaca during Odysseus’s absence, revealing both the strain of managing a household under patriarchal social expectation along with an unexpected freedom of life without male control. As Melantho and Penelope grow into womanhood together, their choices reflect the cost as well as the possibilities of reimaging change in their world. At its core, the book’s exploration of childhood friendship, betrayal, reunion across a power divide, and the struggle to claim one’s own power is deeply moving and emotionally resonant. Recommended.
