Stone Blind

Natalie Haynes
Stone Blind
Picador 2023
371 Seiten
ISBN 978-1-5290-6151-2

Okay, I’ll admit it: I thought I knew the Medusa story. Snake hair, her gaze turns everything to stone, Perseus cuts off her head—the end—next hero, please. Well, I was wrong.

Natalie Haynes completely reimagines this ancient myth—in such a way that by the end, you’re no longer sure who the monster really is. Here, Medusa isn’t the fiend with the deadly gaze, but the only mortal child in a family of immortal Gorgons. Raised by her two sisters, who lovingly learn to care for a being that can age and grow weak—something they themselves will never experience. It is only through Poseidon’s assault in Athena’s temple and Athena’s subsequent revenge (not on Poseidon, of course, but on Medusa—who would have thought?) that she becomes what we all think we know her to be. And then Perseus shows up: less a radiant hero than a spoiled boy who fulfills his “destiny” more by stumbling along than by heroic deeds.

What makes this special: Haynes lets not only Medusa tell her story, but also Athena, Hera, and even the typical supporting characters, while a biting, omniscient narrative voice hovers over it all. The result is a pantheon full of highly intelligent but completely empathy-deficient egomaniacs, while the “monsters” turn out to be the ones who love, care, and have families. Who actually decides what a monster is? It is precisely this question—sometimes subtly humorous, sometimes bitterly serious—that runs through the entire book.

You can tell from every line that Haynes is a writer and comedian. The book is constantly funny (for example, the way the female characters mercilessly exploit the men’s arrogance and self-righteousness!) and, at the same time, incredibly sad.

For anyone who—like me—thought they already knew Greek mythology: Wait until you see how powerfully a simple shift in perspective can turn an entire story on its head. After that, suddenly nothing is as clear as it was before.