Review: Good light reading
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 26, 2012
I enjoyed Hetaera by Susanne Tyrpak as a good summer read with some historical substance.  Despite its flowing historical reputation for the founding of democracy and dialectic reasoning, omen had a very limited role in the public life of Greece of the Golden  Age.  They were, in fact, second-class citizens whose rights were only derived through their relationship with a man- husband, son, father or owner.  The only way a woman could hope to be educated and to have any sort of life outside the house was to be a rich man's bauble- a hetaera, a woman companion whose role was to amuse her owner and entertain his friends as required. In return she was allowed to become educated, dressed beautifully, pampered and taken to events outside the house where respectable women were barred, such as theatre, festivals and some sporting events.  Tyrpak has created a very real ancient world, detailed in way that makes the daily lives of her characters come alive as a real time and place.  The plot is a pretty standard romance and the characters lack true complexity, but I think the main character in this novel is the world of Ancient Greece itself, and that character does have all the complexity and interest of the times.