Stone Blind
-
-
4.3 • 10 Ratings
-
-
- £7.99
-
- £7.99
Publisher Description
** Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 **
In Stone Blind, the instant Sunday Times bestseller, Natalie Haynes brings the infamous Medusa to life as you have never seen her before.
'Witty, gripping, ruthless' - Margaret Atwood via Twitter
'Beautiful and moving' - Neil Gaiman via Twitter
'So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters.’
Medusa is the sole mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her Gorgon sisters, she begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt. And her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know.
When the sea god Poseidon commits an unforgivable act in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can – and Medusa is changed forever. Writhing snakes replace her hair, and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. The power cannot be controlled: Medusa can look at nothing without destroying it. She is condemned to a life of shadows and darkness.
Until Perseus embarks upon a quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .
Praise for Natalie Haynes, the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of A Thousand Ships:
‘With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism… her thoughtful portraits will linger with you long after the book is finished’ - Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles and Circe
‘Haynes combines a wide-ranging knowledge of the original myths with a gift for compelling narrative’ - The Times
‘Natalie Haynes is both a witty and an erudite guide. She wears her extensive learning lightly and deftly drags the Classics into the modern world’ - Kate Atkinson, author of Life After Life
‘Haynes is master of her trade . . . She succeeds in breathing warm life into some of our oldest stories’ - Telegraph
‘Haynes is the nation’s greatest muse’ - Adam Rutherford
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Stone Blind sees Natalie Haynes apply her award-nominated knack for recentering the women of Greek mythology in their own stories to an often misunderstood character: Medusa, the snake-haired Gorgon whose gaze turns all she fixes it upon into stone. In weaving the details of related myths—the birth of Athena, the imprisonment of Danaë, the sacrifice of Andromeda—into this vivid account of Medusa’s origins, Haynes builds up a more accurate portrayal of the “monster” slain by the “hero", Perseus, crafting an ancient analogue for a very modern narrative. Stone Blind is a feminist retelling of a tragic tale that doesn’t shy away from implicating and indicting women for the ways in which they are complicit in perpetuating misogyny.
Customer Reviews
Captivating story
Unusual point of view of the myth about Perseus. We have there a hero and a monster but who is really a monster in that story? For centuries we were told about wonderful hero Perseus who went on a quest to find and kill horrible gorgon Medusa and bring her severed head for a king. Have we ever wondered who was Medusa ? How she became a monster or was she a monster really?
I love books that show us different ways of telling well known stories and make us think what if everything was quite different? After all the history is written by victors (heroes) are we sure they were true ?
Highly recommend to everyone who likes Greek mythology but doesn’t mind hearing them told quite differently.