this book might deserve more stars than this, because it's not awful. but i won't give more because i didn't like anything about this book, except that it was short and quick and that i'm no longer reading it. ( )

Lynn Freed is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. While not as luminous as the first of her books that I had read, "The Servant's Quarters", this novella, "House of Women" was still marvelous: atmospheric, chilling, provocative, and utterly MARVELOUS.

This retelling of the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades takes place in post-WWII South Africa, with a former opera diva as the over-protective mother Nalia, (Demeter of the myth) and her precariously inquisitive and disastrously naive daughter Thea ,(as the Persephone of the myth).
In order to escape her mother's stifling and mysterious affection she is kidnapped by/elopes with her father's swarthy, enigmatic, and much-older cousin, whose name we don't even learn till after she has born their twin children.
Alternately separated from her mother and her children, Thea labors to extract herself from the fathomless secrets that surround every part of her life...

Oh my word...it was so lovely in a dark and twisted kind of way, and the only thing that keeps me from rating it five stars is that the narrative becomes somewhat muddy and disjointed in the chapters concerning Nalia--I suppose Freed attempted to do too much with combining Nalia's past in a Nazi concentration camp and elements of the original Greek myth.
Not to mention that it's too short, which had been my only qualm with "The Servant's Quarters".
But still, "House of Women" is filled with the atmosphere, memorable characterization, and spell-binding prose that will make me read as much of Lynn Freed's work as I can find. Highly recommended! ( )

NOT READ: At seventeen Thea is starved for male affection, so when her father invites a male friend over for dinner she enjoys the attention this man showers upon her. But, her visions of love quickly crumble when she is abruptly ripped from her home, married, and sent away on a ship to a remote island with her new husband (who is old enough to be her father).