Medea

Book Title: Medea

Author: Christa Wolf

Date Started: January 13th 2018

Date Completed: February 5th 2018

Genres: Historical, Adult
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

I've wanted to read Medea ever since I discovered Cassandra - another ancient Greek myth retelling by Christa Wolf. I can't tell you how much I fell in love with that book and so, to be fair, Medea was always going to have a hard time competing. In the end, it didn't even touch Cassandra in terms of excellence, but I think there were several circumstantial things that contributed to that aside from the story.

The first of which is that I'm pretty sure Medea must have had a different translator to Cassandra. Christa Wolf was a German writer and scholar, and so her works are translated into English. Medea felt so much harder to read for me; it was dense, its word choice wasn't as vivid and succinct, and just generally hard to read. The book is less than 200 pages and it took me the better part of a month to get through. It might be that I'm wrong and it's just an example of Wolf's earlier work or something like that, but considering it is a translated work I'd imagine that's what I struggled with.

Aside from that, Wolf's style did still shine through at times. I love how she tells stories; her books are less of a narrative story and more fictionalised studies. The non-linear structure focuses on a human flaw in each character and slowly reveals how it combines with the other flaws of the characters into a spiral of tragedy. Her novels very much follow the style of the ancient stage tragedies, even though they aren't direct retellings of any plays from antiquity. It's not for everyone, but if you're fascinated by people like me it's some of the best stuff out there.

I'm a self-proclaimed classics nerd, but I'm not as familiar with the tale of Jason and Medea as I am with a lot of Greek myths. And even though retellings shouldn't use the original versions as a crutch, not knowing the story well to start with did take away from my experience reading this novel. I felt like a lot of the politics and cultural and personal relationships were revealed once they became apparent to the story, but actually being aware of them to start with might have helped in understanding what was actually happening. I only say this because I know in Cassandra there were a lot of critiques and comments made in the subtext that I only noticed because I knew a lot about the Trojan War to begin with. Perhaps it's something to look at if I ever reread this book, but it didn't strike me as the most accessible instance of a myth retelling.

Medea definitely wasn't as vivid as Cassandra but was still visually alluring and provocative at times. It has a lot to say about the ancient world and woman's place in it, as expected. I feel like Christa Wolf should be more recognised for her work as it really is an interesting look at the classical world and its stories. Maybe go for Cassandra over this one, though.