Book Title: Stone Blind
Author: Natalie Haynes
Date Started: May 10th 2022
Date Completed: May 24th 2022
Genres: Historical, Fantasy
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star
Final Rating: Three Stars
Review:
◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆
I was very, very excited for this book, and it was good! It was good, I promise. But it was not amazing in my opinion and it was not what I was hoping for.
I felt like everyone was written with a teenager's voice (or, rather, with the token 'YA' voice coined for not actually being like how anyone anywhere talks or thinks). And, hey, don't get me wrong; the Greek Olympians were absolutely little children having tantrums, but the power dynamics so intrinsic to Greek mythology between immortals and mortals don't come across when all the other characters sound exactly the same too.
There was also effort put into humanising the Greek gods at times - in some twisted way of explaining why they treated mortals so appallingly - and those fragments were such slivers of brilliance. But the fact that these moments existed made it all the more of a shame that the dynamics outside of the Greek gods' bickering couldn't be vivid, they just felt like a shallow interpretation of how we imagine teenagers might act up.
The story itself isn't very subtle - and it doesn't have to be. It's a story about a girl (well, several actually) being raped because someone else was bored, or had a point to prove to someone outside of the situation, and the ripples that has on other people's vengeance and pride. There's a lot of value in telling this story from that angle (it, shockingly, hasn't really be done quite like this before).
But, in a lot of ways, it's not really Medusa's story (ironically). Her narrative (of which she has very little agency in) acts as the glue holding together a whole host of other myths in this novel (something that in itself is always awesome to see, and well sewn together by Haynes here), but she's honestly in very little of it. Again, does it matter? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, I think it is symbolically and thematically well-realised in the message it's putting forward. But from a narrative perspective, it's pretty unsatisfying. And hey, I guess that's sort of the point - it's not fair. None of these myths are 'fair' to their characters (well, the female ones anyway). But does it make a well-rounded story? Should it? I don't have the answers, but I do know I felt a little let down.
I love Haynes' writing and I love her teaching - I think Pandora's Jar should be required reading on Classics courses, not just because it would mean students had to actually think about the humanity of the women in these myths, but also because Haynes is a fantastically realised academic and storyteller. Her voice (as becomes very obvious if you've listen to her speak, whether on audiobooks, podcasts, events etc) is so distinct, and very present here. I'm just not 100% sure it works for me in novelisations.
