Article contributed by Coline Pechberty-Pautal
On a weekend trip to London, I entered a bookstore and randomly picked up Stone Blind—it was a gorgeous edition, a mix of gold, black, and turquoise with sprayed edges. That book left the shop with me, and I started reading it immediately. In only a few days, I had devoured it.
Stone Blind is a retelling of the myth of Medusa, where she is not the monster usually depicted, but instead a victim in the games Olympus’ Gods and Goddesses play with no regard for others. This book is a gripping stroll across ancient Greece’s world, full of heart-wrenching events and emotional moments. It challenges what you thought you knew about the legend as the “monsters” here become the characters who deserve the most empathy and love.
Stheno and Euryale, winged immortal beings with heads full of snakes, are raising their younger sister, Medusa, a mortal child with beautiful hair. She appears so weak and strange to her older siblings, but the three of them are a tight-knit, loving, and accepting sisterhood.
They live in peace on the coast of Libya, avoided by humans. Until the day Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene’s temple, and the Goddess of wisdom and war punishes the girl, condemning her to never again be able to look upon a living being without killing them.
Perseus, the demi-god son of Zeus, the “hero”, is painted as self-absorbed and ignorant, sent on a seemingly impossible quest by King Polydectes in order to save his mother from a forced marriage to said king. With a lot of help from the Gods, he travels through the continents, killing anyone he perceives as monstrous along the way. His journey brings him to the garden of the Hesperides, to Ethiopia where he meets Andromeda, to the cave at the end of the world in which the Graiai reside, and then to Libya, where the Gorgon sisters live. Where Medusa is recovering from what had been done to her.
On top of a compelling storyline, the prose is exceptional. The writing style weaves beautiful descriptions and dynamic dialogue as we follow the multitude of characters involved in this tale: Medusa, Perseus, Athene, and Poseidon, but also other mythical creatures, goddesses, gods, and humans. The narrator, who speaks directly to the reader in some chapters, brings a small touch of laughter with its straight-forward tone, and involves you even deeper in the story.
Stone Blind is a tale of political intrigue between the members of the Olympian cohort, who disregard the lives of those they trample and exploit in their own plots for revenge against one another. It’s also a tale about family, a desperate quest, and fate, but beware as not a lot of characters are likeable in this story, which challenges us to think about who the real monsters are.
While at first picked up for entertainment purposes, Stone Blind also reads like a sad parallel to our current society—where entitled men think themselves superior to everyone else for no other reason than the system unfairly favours them, where they don’t appropriately deal with rejection, and where women are unjustly punished for these men’s actions towards them and thus have to figure out their own ways to protect themselves.
Natalie Haynes has written other Greek myths retelling, such as The Children of Jocasta, the story of Oedipus and Antigone, and A Thousand Ships, about the women of Troy. The author shows an undeniable talent for recentering the narrative around the women too often pushed to the side in stories and in history. And I, for one, am very much looking forward to diving into these books next.
Stone Blind is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up Stone Blind? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Trigger warning: description of rapes, sexual assaults, violence and killings.
The national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships and Pandora’s Jar returns with a fresh and stunningly perceptive take on the story of Medusa, the original monstered woman.
They will fear you and flee you and call you a monster.
The only mortal in a family of gods, Medusa is the youngest of the Gorgon sisters. Unlike her siblings, Medusa grows older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know.
When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene’s temple, the goddess is enraged. Furious by the violation of her sacred space, Athene takes revenge–on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon’s actions, Medusa is forever transformed. Writhing snakes replace her hair and her gaze will turn any living creature to stone. Cursed with the power to destroy all she loves with one look, Medusa condemns herself to a life of solitude.
Until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .
In Stone Blind, classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes turns our understanding of this legendary myth on its head, bringing empathy and nuance to one of the earliest stories in which a woman–injured by a powerful man–is blamed, punished, and monstered for the assault. Delving into the origins of this mythic tale, Haynes revitalizes and reconstructs Medusa’s story with her passion and fierce wit, offering a timely retelling of this classic myth that speaks to us today.
