"The crow crossed the sky, slow-beating her wings. Beat, beat, beat. It was night, not yet morning, and her feathers were so black that she coasted the air invisible above the city wall."
Thus begins Ali Smith's retelling of Sophocles' tragedy, about a young Theban princess, who decides to bury her dishonoured brother Polynices, against King Creon's express orders-with heart-breaking consequences.
Ali Smith was born in Inverness, where she was quite good at ice-skating and spent a lot of time on the back of a black Shetland pony called Hodrum. When she was about seven years old she began to write stories and poems. The first poem that she remembers writing was about a girl called Isabel debating with an adder, which was threatening to bite her, about which of them would live the longest. (Isabel won.)
I vividly remember reading Antigone at school and really liking it. In fact, I continued to seek out different variations of the story to see how authors throughout the ages have used the story and applied against their own time and circumstances.
Ali Smith does not do this. She does not use the story and make it her own by adapting it to a modern setting or changing characters. However, AS manages to bring the original story home to a modern audience / readership. What I mean is that AS retells the original story - using the characters of a crow and a dog as narrators - but does not expect the reader to have any background knowledge of the story of Oedipus (Antigone's father) or indeed the customs of ancient Thebes.
Highly recommended to anyone who wants to know more about the story but is put off by any of the outdated translations of Sophocles' work.
