Medusa: A beautiful and profound retelling of Medusa’s story

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Four years on and exiled in a remote island with little company except her two immortal sisters, dog and the snakes that adorn her head, Medusa is entranced by the arrival of Perseus. A friend that she begins to trust, and with the desire to shed the ‘ache of loneliness’, she opens up to him. A friend or yet another male that is about to deceive her?. No voy a mentirles. Las primeras 80 páginas (se leen rapidísimas) me tuvieron muy escéptico sobre si iba a disfrutar este libro. Algunas partes muy entretenidas y otras sumamente tediosas de leer. Además de que el romance no me gustó para nada cómo se desarrolló. No me lo creí.

They are journeying to uncover the secrets behind Medusa’s curse and explore the possibility of breaking it. In this adventure, they face many challenges and enemies, from ancient gods to bloodthirsty monsters. Amid this adventure, Medusa and Alexander’s bond grows stronger, and they begin to realize that their connection is more than a fleeting attraction. Jessie Burton has followed down the path taken by writers such as Pat Barker, Madeline Miller, and Natalie Haynes. And that path is retelling these ancient myths from the perspective of, not minor characters, but characters who do not shine in the spotlight. In particular the female voice rarely heard in many of these tales.The entire story was just so tragically beautiful. Medusa was painted as the victim in her own story and not the vengeful killer or the objective to be slain, that she has often been made out to be. She was, instead, viewed here an ordinary girl wishing to live a quiet and solitary existence and with no desires for the power from or notice of the gods. Although Medusa is commonly regarded as a monster, her head is often seen as a protective amulet that would keep evil away. In fact, the name Medusa comes from an ancient Greek verb meaning “to guard or protect.” I wasn’t expecting The Odyssey, but i was expecting some effort to at least pretend like the author was trying to make it authentic to Ancient Greece… Instead, I kept finding turns or phrase or stylistic choices that decidedly didn’t belong in this era - like “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” - and honestly it was distracting - it kept taking me out of the story. Higgins’s own volume is illustrated by the Turner prize-winning Chris Ofili, whose drawings are charming and airy, suggestive in spirit of Matisse’s pencil sketches. While they undoubtedly beautify an already alluring object, the deeper Higgins leads the reader into her forest of tales, the less necessary they feel. Full of rage and self-loathing, Medusa grows ravenous for connection, ‘a girl on the edge’

Not only did I enjoy the story itself, but the art to go along with the retelling was equally stunning. It was simultaneously antique with a creative twist, not entirely Greek-inspired art, but something wholly original too. I’m glad it was illustrated because it greatly enhanced my reading experience and added to the storybook atmosphere the words themselves created. Many later versions of the myth claimed that she was once a beautiful maiden loved by Poseidon. But the young Medusa offended Athena and was therefore cursed to be a terrible monster, forever hunted by men. This is a hard review to write, folks, as I had really high hopes - but unfortunately, they were pretty thoroughly dashed. perhaps my expectations were just really high, but i craved more. it all felt so surface-levelled, especially the characters. Gusseted with a map, family trees, notes and glossaries, this feminist corrective oddly recalls the kind of old-fashioned mythological compendia that Higgins grew up with. She first fell under the spell of the myths when an older brother bought her a copy of Kenneth McLeish’s Children of the Gods. Initially, she suggests, it was the pictures that enthralled her – emphatic illustrations by Elisabeth Frink that exude dark solidity.

References

Medusa does not appear directly in the “Iliad,” the ancient Greek epic poem by Homer that focuses on the events during the Trojan War. The “Iliad” concerns the conflict between the Achaeans (Greeks) and the Trojans and primarily features Achilles and Hector.

In one of his poems, Pindar applied the epithet euparaos (“fair-cheeked”) to Medusa. [1] Attributes Locale Virgil: In the epic the Aeneid (19 BCE), Medusa and the Gorgons are included among the monsters living at the outskirts of the Underworld (6.287ff). Thus, the description of Medusa changed from one of an alluring lady, as Ovid describes in Metamorphoses: However, Medusa’s severed head does appear in the form of the Gorgoneion, a protective amulet or symbol depicting her face. In Book 5 of the “Iliad,” the Gorgoneion is found on the aegis, a shield or breastplate associated with Zeus and Athena. it’s literally a retelling of the myth as in everything is kinda just…told to you. there’s not a lot of showing and, this is definitely due to my expectations, i was disappointed to find out it was just the myth as we know it but with feminism.

A dazzling, lyrical YA retelling of Greek myth, from Jessie Burton, internationally bestselling author of The Miniaturist and The Muse. Burton’s Medusa is a young woman trapped in her own body. Her body transformed into the monster by Athena that is now her prison. She is unbearably lonely, horrified by what she has become. Indelibly she is slowly dying inside.