Medusa: The Girl Behind the Myth (Illustrated Gift Edition)

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I was apprehensive at first as the tale of Medusa is much beloved and she has become such a multi-dimensional symbol that has morphed through the ages, but Haynes manages to be a worthwhile and insightful addition to the Medusa commentary that feels fresh, fun and faithful to the spirit of her source material (much of the tales here are adaptations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and, sorry Pegasus fans, but the winged horse is absent from this tale). Though unhappy with her appearance, she shares an interesting relationship with her snakes who each have names and moods that need to be tended. It's been four years since Athena cursed Medusa, and she's an 18-year-old exiled on a rocky island on which she lives with her sisters and her dog. Medusa appears in Stone Blind as something as a minor character, and in the brief interludes we are privy to her perspective, she doesn’t have much agency or complexity. It was simply a compulsively readable story that sucked you in, making you curiously turn the pages, excited to find out what happened next.

This book was described as "a dazzling, feminist retelling of a Greek myth," which is a perfect fit for my daughter's reading pile.And discover that as alike as they are, they are set on a collision course that only one can survive.

It doesn’t offer anything particularly fresh or exciting if you already know the myth (although there is a chapter narrated by a crow, and another by Medusa’s snakes, hence the additional star). She first fell under the spell of the myths when an older brother bought her a copy of Kenneth McLeish’s Children of the Gods. SHORTLISTED FOR THE YOTO CARNEGIE MEDAL _______________ 'A beautiful and profound retelling' - Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles and Circe 'Gives the serpent-headed monster of myth a powerful and haunting humanity' - Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne and Elektra _______________ If I told you that I'd killed a man with a glance, would you wait to hear the rest? Following the depictions of Medusa as a monster came images that symbolized her as a sort of femme fataPerseus comes across as far more of a brat, and it is his unwavering belief his original plan is the only way forward that ultimately leads to everything falling apart for the pair. Though, for a book about Medusa, we find her only minimally present, focusing more on the voices and actions of those around her—most notably Perseus and Athene—and how they act upon her as if it were a meta-narrative expression on how someone is pushed aside and othered even in their own story.