Ivy Pochoda’s new horror novel is a stiletto-sharp remake of Euripides

Ivy Pochoda is best known for her atmospheric crime novels, including the acclaimed “Sing Her Down.” Her new book, “Ecstasy,” is her first foray into outright horror fiction — and it is an ambitious debut.

Pochoda, a former journalist, takes on nothing less than Euripides’ play “The Bacchae,” a work she fell in love with in high school. And while her novel hews closely to the original, it might also be described as “The White Lotus” meets “Midsommar,” with a nod to “Absolutely Fabulous.”

Let me explain.

The Greek god Dionysus — aka Bacchus — is most often invoked these days through the adjective Dionysian, usually applied to a party that’s gotten out of control.

The actual Dionysian rites seem to have been far more sinister, to judge by “The Bacchae,” a masterwork of world theater. Written around 450 B.C., it makes the bloodthirsty excesses of today’s streaming content look like “The Baby-Sitters Club.”

A vengeful, shape-shifting, twice-born god who drives women mad with sexual desire but also has an ecstatic fury that drives them to dismember and eat their own children, Dionysus is not really the guy you want to show up at the Met Gala. He’s the god of rapture and rupture, euphoric dancing and gruesome deaths. All of these qualities are on gleeful display in Pochoda’s stiletto-sharp remake.

Set on the Greek island of Naxos, “Ecstasy” is told through multiple points of view — a neat strategy for a tale inspired by a polymorphic deity. Lena and Hedy, the two central characters, are former hard-partying besties. Now in their 50s, they met as young dancers in the Frankfurt Ballet, where their careers weren’t so much derailed as cast aside like worn-out pointe shoes.

The two embarked on that 1990s vision quest favored by a certain type of beautiful, aimless, vaguely arts-adjacent person in her 20s: traveling from country to country, rave to rave, certain that someone else will always pay for their drinks, their drugs, their hotel rooms and clothes.

Their ecstasy-fueled idyll ends quickly. By the time they’re 26, Hedy is losing her sight to macular degeneration, and Lena has met, married and had a child with Stavros, an immigrant’s son who built an international luxury hotel empire. The two friends drift apart, seeing each other every few years: Hedy still in her increasingly threadbare boho attire and knockoff bags, drugstore sunglasses to protect her failing vision; Lena in Hermés, a “costume at first. Then armor against the realization that she’d made a mistake.”

But then Lena’s suffocating marriage ends after Stavros dies on the beach adjoining Agape Villas, the newly constructed luxe resort that’s the crown jewel of his hotel chain. Drew — Lena and Stavros’ odious son — takes over the business. Drew arranges for his mother and Hedy to accompany him and his brittle wife, Jordan, to Naxos. They’ll stay at the resort for a private soft opening. A dozen villas, each with an infinity pool; an on-site cobbler crafting bespoke sandals; a perfume butler. Extravagant meals. Massages, Reiki healing, chakra balancing.

Also, a group of wild-eyed, wild-haired women squatting in makeshift shelters on the beach where Stavros died. Lena describes one of them: “Her scent is strong — earthy, mossy, a feral crawl through a cave. Mud and sweat and something Lena can’t quite place. She can hear something too … a chant and a dance. A taste in her mouth — blood or wine.”

Drew, who sees everything in transactional terms, is most concerned about the negative impact the encampment will have on guests paying thousands of dollars a night. He also suspects the women may have had something to do with his father’s death. But local law enforcement isn’t helpful when Drew attempts to evict the squatters. There are issues about eminent domain and the “cultural preservation” of “some rubble in a cave that archaeologists claim was part of a shrine to some barely known god.”

Drew’s Ivy League background obviously didn’t include Classics, or he might have known that Naxos contains an ancient sanctuary devoted to Dionysus.

What ensues in “Ecstasy” isn’t exactly a surprise, even if you haven’t read Euripides, though it’s still shocking. Nearly 2,500 years after “The Bacchae,” Pochoda proves that the old gods never die. They just move on to another party.