A bold and captivating new novel of ancient Greece, from the celebrated, award-winning author of The Golden Mean.
Pythias is her father's daughter, with eyes his exact shade of unlovely, intelligent grey. A slave to his own curiosity and intellect, Aristotle has never been able to resist wit in another--even in a girl child who should be content with the kitchen, the loom and a life dictated by the womb. And oh his little Pytho is smart, able to best his own students in debate and match wits with a roomful of Athenian philosophers. Is she a freak or a harbinger of what women can really be? Pythias must suffer that argument, but she is also (mostly) secure in her father's regard.
But then Alexander dies a thousand miles from Athens, and sentiment turns against anyone associated with him, most especially his famous Macedonian-born teacher. Aristotle and his family are forced to flee to Chalcis, a garrison town. Ailing, mourning and broken in spirit, Aristotle soon dies. And his orphaned daughter, only 16, finds out that the world is a place of superstition, not logic, and that a girl can be played upon by gods and goddesses, as much as by grown men and women. To safely journey to a place in which she can be everything she truly is, Aristotle's daughter will need every ounce of wit she possesses, but also grace and the capacity to love.
The Sweet Girl
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LONGLIST 2012 – SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
“The Sweet Girl is a remarkable novel, not just a pleasure to read but also a book that I expect to reread several times.”
—Jeet Heer, The National Post
“The intimate and the infinite are tangled together in this incandescent book, lit by Aristotle’s bright spark of a daughter. Lucid even in nightmare, The Sweet Girl slips sideways around the philosopher to examine the lives of girls and women when we were not yet human.”
—Marina Endicott, author of The Little Shadows and Good to a Fault
“Annabel Lyon is a wonderful writer, adept at breathing life into the ancient past. She reanimates near-mythical characters until we feel we know them intimately—their dreams and desires, their brilliance and their failings—which is an achievement only the finest historical novelists can aspire to. I loved The Golden Mean, and to return to the world of Aristotle and Alexander in The Sweet Girl is a rare pleasure.”
—Jane Johnson, author of The Tenth Gift, The Salt Road and The Sultan’s Wife
“The Sweet Girl is a remarkable novel, not just a pleasure to read but also a book that I expect to reread several times.”
—Jeet Heer, The National Post
“The intimate and the infinite are tangled together in this incandescent book, lit by Aristotle’s bright spark of a daughter. Lucid even in nightmare, The Sweet Girl slips sideways around the philosopher to examine the lives of girls and women when we were not yet human.”
—Marina Endicott, author of The Little Shadows and Good to a Fault
“Annabel Lyon is a wonderful writer, adept at breathing life into the ancient past. She reanimates near-mythical characters until we feel we know them intimately—their dreams and desires, their brilliance and their failings—which is an achievement only the finest historical novelists can aspire to. I loved The Golden Mean, and to return to the world of Aristotle and Alexander in The Sweet Girl is a rare pleasure.”
—Jane Johnson, author of The Tenth Gift, The Salt Road and The Sultan’s Wife
About the Author
ANNABEL LYON's first novel, The Golden Mean, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Ethel Wilson Prize, and the Commonwealth Prize. Winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Prize, The Golden Mean has been translated into fourteen languages and became a #1 bestseller in Canada. Among Lyon's other work is Oxygen, a short story collection nominated for the Danuta Gleed Award, and The Best Thing for You, a collection of novellas that was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Before Lyon decided to write full-time, she studied classical music, philosophy, and law and taught piano. She lives in Vancouver with her partner and two children.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By sean s.
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
Annabel Lyon is a writer based in Vancouver. The Sweet Girl is in many ways a complement of her earlier novel, The Golden Mean, which was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Both novels feature the great philosopher Aristotle, who has had a lasting impact on the way we conceive of philosophy, politics and science.
Whereas in the Golden Mean the focus was on Aristotle in his role as mentor to Alexander the Great, in the Sweet Girl the focus is on Aristotle in his role as father to his daughter Pythias.
In his glowing review of the Sweet Girl in the National Post, Jeet Heer observed that:
"As against more flamboyantly poetic and debonair sages such as Plato or Nietzsche, Aristotle was a stolid and unsexy proto-scientist, a collector of facts, a dissector of data, a taxonomist happy to subdivide the world into neat categories."
And while Aristotle's categorization has been foundational to modern science, there has been a dark side of this categorization, which is still present in our collective unconscious and social codes: either you were a free man (more rational, in the public world, civilized, Greek), or you were "Other" (more emotional, in the household, a woman, a slave, a foreigner).
What is enriching about Lyon's treatment, is that she is sensitive to this ambivalent heritage of ancient Greece and its most towering figures. Pythias, arguably as intelligent as Aristotle himself, is limited not by actual biology - the reality of being female - but rather of her biological classification as female, as "Other".
Brilliant as she is, rather than considering herself a victim, her eventful life is a shining challenge to her father's outdated biology.
A great read!
Both novels feature the great philosopher Aristotle, who has had a lasting impact on the way we conceive of philosophy, politics and science.
Whereas in the Golden Mean the focus was on Aristotle in his role as mentor to Alexander the Great, in the Sweet Girl the focus is on Aristotle in his role as father to his daughter Pythias.
In his glowing review of the Sweet Girl in the National Post, Jeet Heer observed that:
"As against more flamboyantly poetic and debonair sages such as Plato or Nietzsche, Aristotle was a stolid and unsexy proto-scientist, a collector of facts, a dissector of data, a taxonomist happy to subdivide the world into neat categories."
And while Aristotle's categorization has been foundational to modern science, there has been a dark side of this categorization, which is still present in our collective unconscious and social codes: either you were a free man (more rational, in the public world, civilized, Greek), or you were "Other" (more emotional, in the household, a woman, a slave, a foreigner).
What is enriching about Lyon's treatment, is that she is sensitive to this ambivalent heritage of ancient Greece and its most towering figures. Pythias, arguably as intelligent as Aristotle himself, is limited not by actual biology - the reality of being female - but rather of her biological classification as female, as "Other".
Brilliant as she is, rather than considering herself a victim, her eventful life is a shining challenge to her father's outdated biology.
A great read!
By A. Palmer
Format:Hardcover
i enjoyed it very much, odd someone who didn't finish it feels qulified to review it so poorly. i will pick up golden mean now! thank ms lyon!!
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Again, I was disappointed and gave up reading halfway through. Ms. Lyon has done a lot of research but the book "reads" as a book for young readers. The author certainly does not have the writing talent of Hilary Mantel. I am not quite sure why she gets the accolades that she does. Margaret Doody's fictional books about Aristotle are a much more satisfying read. I think I am being generous giving this a 2 star rating!
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