Stone Blind by
April 2023
Another great recounting of a Greek myth by Natalie Haynes, whose book A Thousand Ships caught me up in its tragic tales and still hasn’t let me go. This book has more humor in it, but it’s still an inevitable tragedy. You (probably) already know what’s going to happen to Medusa, so her fate looms over the entire book, only growing more terrible as your affection for the character herself grows. It’s another story of gods and goddesses playing with humans (and each other) for sport in the most infuriating and heartbreaking of ways. Like A Thousand Ships, this book has a more satisfying conclusion than I expected, one which brings out the most human dimensions of the most inhuman beings.
I happened to read this while spending a week in Sicily, where images of Medusa were everywhere, not least on the regional flag. It was perfect.