Alcestis

Publishing Triangle‘s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Finalist for the BSFS Compton Crook Award
Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction

In Greek myth, Alcestis is known as the ideal wife; she loved her husband so much that she died and went to the underworld in his place. In this vividly-imagined debut, Katharine Beutner gives voice to the woman behind the ideal and reveals the part of the story that’s never been told: What happened to Alcestis in the three days she spent in the underworld?

Re-released by Soho Press September 5 2023. Order below.

In Greek mythology, Alcestis is known as the good wife; she loved her husband so much that she died to save his life and was sent to the underworld in his place. In this poetic and vividly imagined debut, Katharine Beutner gives voice to the woman behind the ideal, bringing to life the world of Mycenaean Greece, a world peopled by capricious gods, where royal women are confined to the palace grounds and passed as possessions from father to husband.

Alcestis tells of a childhood spent with her sisters in the bedchamber where her mother died giving birth to her and of her marriage at the age of fifteen to Admetus, the young king of Pherae, a man she barely knows, who is kind but whose heart belongs to a god. She also tells the part of the story that’s never been told: What happened to Alcestis in the three days she spent in the underworld before being rescued by Heracles? In the realm of the dead, Alcestis falls in love with the goddess Persephone and discovers the true horror and beauty of death.

“Beutner renders her multilayered heroine with beauty and delicacy, and concerns herself with no less than the intricacies of the soul …” – Publishers Weekly

“… the novel takes a myth, often told without an ‘I,’ and puts it into the mouth of Alcestis. The story of Alcestis becomes Alcestis’s story. After this erudite reimagining of an ancient tale, the story of Alcestis will be remembered differently. The piquant novel is as alluring as Persephone’s pomegranates; its protagonist as exceptional as Beutner’s vision.” – Janelle Adsit, ForeWord

“Beutner’s underworld is haunting. She does a great job of incorporating the existing mythology and of using her prose to set a scene both beautiful and utterly alien … Later, when Alcestis meets some of the shades who live in the underworld, there are some moments that will break your heart. … I was glad to have followed her on her journey, and to feel like I “knew” this mythological character better than I did before.” – Kelly Lasiter, Fantasy Literature

“There are no happinesses here that are not accidental or heavily revenged, and yet this is a beautiful, utterly enjoyable work, as wistful and note-perfect as a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Beutner has taken loss and sadness, sharpened them, and shaped them into a tale at once profound and daring in what it refuses to give its readers. This is the dawn of an extremely promising career.” – Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen, Open Letters Monthly

“Alcestis carries the tale, along with the gods and goddesses who are her real adversaries and foils. This is a beautiful, mourning dream of a novel that, like Alcestis, comes alive when it enters the realm of death.” – Margaret Donsbach, Heritage Key

“In the tradition of great retellings like Mary Renault’s ‘The King Must Die’ or Ursula K. LeGuin’s ‘Lavinia,’ Beutner helps us re-see the familiar. … ‘Alcestis‘ is nobody’s celebratory gayed-up Greek myth (for that, try Ovid). Instead, Beutner’s retelling is resolutely queer: strange, beautiful, ambivalent, sexually fluid, full of human complexity and godly simplicity.” – Andrea Lawlor, Lambda Literary

“Katharine Beutner’s Alcestis lends divine breath and flesh to that ancient shade of myth, the lonely and brave queen who gave her life to Hades in exchange for her husband’s. Alcestis is a novel about sacrifice, renunciation, and loss — also the persistence of desire and the vitality of love. Everyday life in the ancient world, a no-escape-clause afterlife in the underworld, vulnerable mortals, and passionate and tormented gods — all are imagined with intense actuality in a novel that is as intoxicating and hypnotic as the sacred smoke inhaled by the oracles.” – Elizabeth Knox, author of The Vintner’s Luck and The Dreamhunter Duet

“Alcestis offers an engaging, subversive reimagining of the tale of the eponymous Greek heroine who is upheld as a shining example of the dutiful wife for her selfless sacrifice. Katharine Beutner’s Alcestis is a far more willful heroine, and her encounters with the gods of the underworld resonate with a genuine sense of the numinous.” – Jacqueline Carey, author of Kushiel’s Mercy

Check out Katharine’s appearances on these podcasts, talking about Alcestis and Greek mythology: