BookBrowse Reviews Ecstasy by Ivy Pochoda

BookBrowse:

A feverish, feminist reimagining of a Greek tragedy, Ecstasy blends horror and surrealism with family drama to explore motherhood, autonomy, female rage, and the true cost of freedom.

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For access to our digital magazine, free books,and other benefits, become a member today.

Lena has spent decades living under the thumb of her husband, a wealthy, Greek hotel developer. When he dropped dead from a suspected heart attack, Lena hoped for a fresh start; an opportunity to reclaim the wild abandon she had in her youth, which she spent as a professional dancer and unashamed party girl. Instead, her plans are upended by her adult son Drew, who essentially takes his father's place. Just as controlling, condescending, and misogynistic, Drew makes it his mission to complete his father's final unfinished venture—the luxury resort Agape Villas.

Drew takes his pregnant wife Jordan, Lena, and her friend Hedy to the Greek island of Naxos to test-run the resort before its grand opening. Here, he finds himself at odds with a group of women camping on the adjoining beach. Led by Luz, an enigmatic drug dealer, the group's hedonistic lifestyle and late-night, wine-fueled dance parties threaten to spoil the carefully curated façade of glamour that Drew has cultivated. He wants the women gone, but Lena and Hedy are drawn to the group's apparent feral freedom and begin attending their nocturnal gatherings.

Author Ivy Pochoda creates a stifling yet gripping atmosphere as the women's nightly meetings become increasingly violent and hallucinogenic. Striking, surreal visual tableaux during these scenes allow her to delve into the book's themes in a deeper, allegorical way, while also making more direct references to The Bacchae by Euripides (see Beyond the Book)—the ancient Greek tragedy that served as inspiration for the novel. Those familiar with the play will likely enjoy these nods, but prior knowledge of the text is certainly not required to feel immersed in the singular fever dream that is Ecstasy.

Drugs and alcohol play the role of grounding and contextualizing these more bizarre moments. Men transform into animals, flesh is peeled from bodies, and yet the reader can never be certain how much of this is meant to be magical realism, and how much is simply the imaginings of susceptible minds under the influence. The narration, which is primarily from Lena's perspective with other characters' points of view sprinkled throughout, thus feels unreliable. This adds yet more tension to the reading experience, and effectively demonstrates the dangers inherent to avoiding reality and chasing the past through substance abuse.

This idea is exemplified in Hedy's story arc. Suffering from macular degeneration, Hedy is gradually losing her sight. As such, she is particularly keen for her and Lena to tap back into their youthful frivolity before she feels she will no longer be able to. But though the wildness of the beach group's dancing and Luz's promise that she can restore Hedy's sight are initially tempting, she ultimately knows that any vision brought about by Luz's mysterious pills and potions would be "[…] only a trick. An exaggerated illusion of a world that doesn't exist."

The arcs of the other characters primarily explore the dark side of motherhood and the taboo subject of women who regret succumbing to societal pressures to have a child. Lena and Drew's relationship is deeply unhealthy, as he increasingly fights to belittle and control her. We also learn that Luz was betrayed by her own son and ended up in prison as a result. Jordan, having had a very strained relationship with her own mother growing up, witnesses the toxicity surrounding her, and begins to feel ever more fearful of the potential "monster" growing inside her womb. After all, she muses, "We bear the agents of our own destruction."

The characters' unhappiness, toxic relationships, and refusal to address their problems in a healthy way propel them all towards a brutal climax. Numbed to reality as they are by this point, the emotional fallout is perhaps not mined as thoroughly as it could have been, but the shocking final images and wild ride leading to them are all but guaranteed to make a lasting impression.

This review first ran in the July 30, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.