The Sweet Girl

Lyon returns to ancient Greece for her second novel, this time focusing on Aristotle’s daughter, Pythias. At the outset, she is seven years old and devoted to her famous father, curious about the world around her and displaying her father’s powers of debate and observation. She chafes at woman’s work and the limitations of her gender, a problem that only grows as she matures and finds herself caught between Aristotle’s world of inquiry and the woman’s world where she is expected to dwell. When Alexander the Great dies, Aristotle—a fellow Macedonian and Alexander’s teacher—must flee to the countryside, where he dies. Aristotle’s will dictates a course for the rest of his daughter’s life—including marriage to Nicanor, a distant cousin, which would entail surrendering to a domesticity for which Pythias, now a teenager, is too clever by half. Lyons writes the tale of Pythias’s efforts to escape, and the price she must pay to claim the life she desires. Writing in the present tense, Lyon does a remarkable job of making Pythias, her ancient world, and her eternal problems raw and compelling. While this book necessarily lacks the surprising freshness of The Golden Mean, Lyons nonetheless lives up to her promise, delivering to readers a modern twist on the ancient world. (June)