Stone blind A novel

Feminist retellings of Greek myths are all the rage, and Haynes (A Thousand Ships, 2021) stands among the foremost authors in this area. Her third such novel melds her classics expertise (see her nonfiction work, Pandora's Jar, 2022) with a conversational style and biting humor. With snakes for hair and a petrifying gaze, Medusa has been considered a horrible monster, but Haynes makes us rethink this characterization. The only mortal among the Gorgons along Libya's shores, Medusa is an attractive, curious young woman growing up under her loving older sisters' care. Her rape by Poseidon in Athene's temple traumatizes her; so does Athene's act of revenge. Perseus, the supposed hero seeking to decapitate a Gorgon, is an incompetent adventurer without the sense to ask for directions. Seen from multiple perspectives, including those of Perseus' mother, Danaë; prickly goddesses; and the Gorgoneion (Medusa's head), which speaks with candor, this tale evokes passionate fury on behalf of its heroine, a tragic victim of male violence. Her death scene is utterly heartbreaking. It all begs the question, How could we have gotten Medusa's story so wrong?

Haynes (A Thousand Ships) reframes the story of Medusa from Greek mythology as one of victim-shaming in this sharp retelling. Haynes recasts Medusa, the only mortal from a family of gods, not as a monster but as survivor of rape by Poseidon, whose wife, Athena, then punishes her for it. As Medusa deals with her new life with a head of snakes and a gaze that turns people to stone, Haynes interjects by addressing the reader with a question: "I'm wondering if you still think of her as a monster.... I suppose it depends on what you think that word means." Haynes's inventive reappraisal extends to her narrative devices, including rueful passages from the perspective of Medusa's severed head ("I have a much lower opinion of mortal men than did, for reasons which I would assume were obvious"), and she invites the reader into Medusa's point of view with rich sensory details: "She could hear the cormorants arguing with the gulls and she knew exactly which rocks they had perched on before picking their quarrel." Even before the plot builds toward Perseus's pursuit of Medusa, Hayes conveys an urgency to Medusa's life as a mortal woman among vengeful gods. Fans of feminist retellings will love this. (Feb.)