‘The Sweet Girl’ by Annabel Lyon

Reviewed by Sunita Soliar

Annabel Lyon’s new novel, The Sweet Girl, tells the story of Pythias, the daughter of Aristotle. The book is a sequel to The Golden Mean, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and has been translated into six languages. Following Lyon’s highly regarded short-story and novella collections, Oxygen and The Best Thing For You, her novels have seen the author emerge as a national literary figure in Canada.

The Sweet Girl presents the story of Pythias, the daughter of Aristotle. The book, which is a sequel to The Golden Mean, presents a young woman who is intelligent and curious, and we soon realize that it is a rite of passage for the daughter, not a fictionalized biography of the great philosopher. Little is known about the real Pythias – there is a reference to her in Aristotle’s will – and Lyon invents a life for her, narrating the story in the first-person from her point of view.

The book begins with Pythias, aged seven, idolizing her father. She says, “Daddy’s symposia are famous throughout the city,” and tells him that she desires to be “a teacher, like you.” In the opening scene Pythias joins him in slaughtering a lamb, and Aristotle tells her that, “it’s all right to feel sad.” She asks why she might be sad, and he replies, “Because it’s cute.” Lyon humanizes the philosopher, making us see him as a compassionate father. However, the protective relationship between parent and child is short-lived, and when Pythias puts her hand on her father’s to cut the lamb’s throat, blood streaks her face, symbolically tainting her innocence and giving a hint of the harsh life that she will later experience.

When she approaches puberty, Pythias begins to encounter the restrictions that are placed on her because she is a woman, and she finds herself being forced out of her father’s society. For example, she must hide her menstruation from him, and is excluded from his discussions because, as she puts it, “I’m a girl. A bleeder.” This contrasts starkly with the freedom with which her father encourages her and her adopted brother, Myrmex, to discuss bodily functions: Aristotle describes lancing an abscess and checking for pus, and says, “the body is not disgusting.” Seemingly, this is only true when it comes to the male body or shared processes.

Indeed, Pythias begins to feel some separation from her father’s way of thinking, for example, when Aristotle declares boredom to be “the female aspect of mind.” Lyon is quick to highlight the inequalities in the patriarchal society of ancient Greece, and undermines male authority through the witticisms of Herpyllis, Aristotle’s concubine. Herpyllis describes a rival to Aristotle as “a pompous prick” and has to try “not to snort” in his presence. She also shows great affection for Pythias, whose mother is dead, and considers her prospects with a brutal outlook. Herpyllis asks, “What is her worth, exactly?” and expresses her concern that by educating Pythias, Aristotle is making her less eligible.

Pythias’s shift from adolescence to womanhood is accelerated when Aristotle and his household flee to Chalcis, a garrison town, as a result of growing resentment from the Athenians towards their Macedonian conquerors (Aristotle is a Macedonian in Athens). Aristotle’s health is failing and he soon dies, leaving Pythias to fend for herself. The household disintegrates, Myrmex steals from Pythias, and soon she finds herself cohabiting with the prostitutes of the town, whose society is presented as being more liberal than that of other Greek women.

As Pythias begins to explore her own sexuality, she is repulsed (yet fascinated) by the sounds of intimacy that she hears in her house now that there is no male authority, and she believes that the gods are punishing the house. However, she soon succumbs to her desire for Myrmex, whom she re-encounters, and they spend the night together. Pythias acknowledges that, “we go where we’ve been heading since the day he arrived: hello and goodbye in the same breath.” There is to be no romance here: when Pythias wakes up Myrmex is gone for good and has stolen her earnings.

Having been used to freedom amongst the prostitutes, Pythias is once again forced into a prescribed role when she marries her cousin, Nicanor, for whom Aristotle intended her. Nicanor is restrained but Pythias is forthright and playful with him, and Lyon suggests that he will soften. Lyon ends on a note of hope when Pythias tells Nicanor that, “I’ve been thinking I might do some teaching,” which is perhaps an indication of the freer roles for women in later Hellenistic society.

Overall, Lyon’s imagined life of Pythias blends history with invention, and there is a dutiful exploration of religion, as well as racial and social divisions. Lyon’s use of the present tense attempts to enliven history; however, coupled with the frequent use of short sentences, the tense makes the narrative too detached and mundane, and much of the book reads like a description of events. Pythias’s narration can be insightful, for example, when Aristotle says, “Girls like new clothes for parties” Pythias observes: “He says this like it’s a fundamental proposition. All x is y. No a is b.” However, the dialogue often feels trite and lacking in subtlety, for example, “I am a type” and “I miss the smell of him… the man who isn’t my brother.” Lyon has chosen not to detail the philosophy of Aristotle, but her brief references to Plato’s Cave and ideas of the rational mind and the animal body feel like name-checking rather than a fresh perspective.

However, the main problem of the narrative is the passivity of the protagonist. Pythias may be a good observer, but the novel never fully explores her emotional life: we are constantly told feelings rather than shown them.

Lyon’s most successful character is Herpyllis, who exhibits all of the wit and energy we might hope for in Pythias. She sharply calls up Aristotle: “You’re already awfully famous…what on earth are you going to learn from being pushed around in the current like a fig in a custard?” and we believe Pythias when she says that, “Herpyllis proves she could have made a soldier.”

By contrast, we never see Pythias struggling against anything, nor do we see her passions coming to the forefront, and the result is unsympathetic characterization and a lack of tension in the scenes. Lyon is keen to represent the way in which women were confined in ancient Greece, and in doing so she seems to completely neglect the works of writers such as Sophocles, who present courageous and defiant women and explore heightened emotional experiences. Sadly, there is no real sense of conflict in The Sweet Girl, and a failure to acknowledge the prominent role of women in Greek tragedies makes Lyon’s exploration of female lives in antiquity limited.

Random House Canada | 256 pages |  $29.95 | cloth | ISBN #978-0307359445