I was astonished to find myself flying through page after page of Haynes’ summaries, enthralled at the plot twists and playwrights’ audacity and eager to find out what happens next. Haynes’ book dwells not on the plays but on the stories of women’s lives that they contain; nevertheless, her enthusiasm for the original texts is impossible to ignore. Her broader goal requires her to provide outlines of the texts in which her subjects’ stories are buried, but those outlines are beautiful, compelling overviews. They’re crafted a bit like what it would sound like to have a good storyteller relate the latest gossip to you over drinks at a club, with all the colloquial jokes and asides that a lively retelling would include. If I’d read summaries like these back in high school, I would have been instantly hooked. Pandora’s Jar is a delightful, compelling read. Lively, provocative, and well-researched, it’s the sort of book that leaves readers with a thirst to learn more..

With Pandora’s Jar, she returns to nonfiction to examine the origin stories and cultural legacies of the best-known women of classical literature, with the characteristic blend of scholarship and sharp humour that will be familiar to fans.

Haynes has a stand-up comedy background, and her wry wit leavens these grisly tragedies. Her irreverence—Kronos eats his children and ‘fails a basic fatherhood test’—has the ring of affectionate family teasing: that’s how intimately she knows and loves her subject. Alongside the laughs are rigorous analysis and ethical wrangling, as she considers the dilemmas posed by mythology.

Part of the project of this hugely lively, fun, yet serious book is to unpeel the accretions that have affixed themselves over time, like barnacles on a shipwreck, to the women of Greek myth, from Pandora to Helen of Troy via Phaedra and Medea. Haynes examines the original sources for the characters, noting how, often—though far from invariably—later incarnations have underplayed the much fuller, more complex roles given to them in antiquity.

Haynes brings two important things to the project. She studied Classics at Cambridge and used to be a comedian. Her tone is often comic, in a Radio 4 sort of way.

Haynes's authorial voice is remarkable: expressive, nuanced, impassioned. Her tone is absolutely accessible, even conversational, and often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Haynes (also a stand-up comic) is as well versed in the modern world and its concerns as in the ancients.

Portrayals of these women frequently fall along predictable, usually condemnatory lines—Medea the unnatural mother, Helen the ultimate femme fatale. Haynes complicates these narratives, diving into the historical and literary records.

Although the author assumes her audience is familiar with Greek mythology, readers of all levels of knowledge are certain to be enthralled with her analysis and find her humor and wit captivating.

Classicist Haynes...challenges common ideas about Greek mythology in this sharp corrective.