An aged prophetess at Delphi, the most sacred oracle in ancient Greece, looks back over her strange life as the Pythia, the First Lady and voice of the god Apollo. As a young virgin with disturbing psychic powers, Arieka was handed over to the service of the shrine by her parents. She has now spent sixty years as the very medium, the torn mouthpiece, of equivocal mantic utterances from the bronze tripod in the sanctuary beneath the temple. Over a lifetime at the mercy of god and priest and people she has watched the decay of Delphi's fortunes and its influence in the world. Her reflections on the mysteries of the oracle, which her own weird gifts have embodied, are matched by her feminine insight into the human frailties of the High Priest himself, a true Athenian, whose intriguing against the Romans brings about humiliation and disaster. This extraordinary short novel was left in draft at Golding's sudden death in 1993 but it is a psychological and historical triumph.
From Publishers Weekly
Nobel Laureate Golding, who died in 1993, explores the disturbing relationships between the mystical, the sacred and the profane in ancient Greece in his 13th and final novel. Narrated by an octogenarian prophetess named Arieka, the book proceeds in rigidly linear form to recount her life from birth onward, employing a distinctly British voice that is mildly philosophical, occasionally graphic, often self-deprecating and generally rather arch. The young Arieka is ugly and dangerously naive, and she apparently possesses mysterious powers and a propensity for mischief that make her impossible to marry off. In late adolescence, she is "adopted" by Ionides, the High Priest at Delphi. Worldly and somewhat cynical, Ionides manages the renowned Delphic oracle like a lucrative tourist site, often fabricating prophecies to soothe the masses. Knowing that Arieka would make an ideal Pythia?the double-tongued Lady, voice of Apollo?he takes her under his care, educating her in a massive bookroom. That Arieka herself is never fully realized as a character is partly the result of her "occupation"?she is, after all, a medium, the human mouthpiece for the prophetic god, and not much else?and in part because she has been left in draft form amid an essentially unfinished narrative. The novel's philosophical framework is in place: questions about faith and exploitation, slavery and freedom abound, as do musings on human societies and their all-too-human perversions. But the plot (and an underdeveloped subplot in which Ionides attempts to subvert Roman rule) feels rushed and inconclusive, and its characters, while articulate, remain curiously soulless.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Nobel Prize winner Golding had finished only the second draft of this book when he died in 1993, a fact the publisher justifiably felt a need to include in a forenote. The story of Arieka (Little Barbarian), a sexually alluring and rebellious girl of ancient Greek Aetolia, is awfully promising but needs literary flesh. Arieka flees an arranged marriage, thereby shaming her family and dooming herself to a life of spinsterhood, when Ionides, the high priest of the nearby Delphic oracle, offers to make her a Pythia, or priestess of the oracle. Arieka exhibits such an extraordinary affinity for the gods that she soon becomes First Pythia, a role she plays with aplomb. When a winter storm threatens their buildings, Ionides and Arieka travel to Athens to raise funds-as if the pope, in order to put a new roof on St. Peter's Basilica, made the rounds of New York's cocktail circuit. Things take a turn for the worse when Ionides, always the schemer, gets involved in a plot against the Roman aggressors. The novel is somewhat undeveloped, but the author's reputation guarantees interest. Recommended for most collections, especially those wishing to fill out the Golding oeuvre.
Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.