Medusa's sisters

Lauren J. A. Bear

Book - 2023

"The end of the story is only the beginning in this vividly stunning reimagining of the myth of Medusa and the sisters who loved her, in this captivating and moving debut novel. Even before they were transformed into Gorgons, Medusa and her sisters Stheno and Euryale were unique among immortals. Curious about mortals and their lives, Medusa and her sisters entered the human world in search of a place to belong, yet quickly found themselves at the perilous center of a dangerous Olympian rivalry and learned - too late - that a god's love is a violent one. Forgotten by history and diminished by poets, the other two Gorgons have never been more than horrifying hags, damned and doomed. But they were sisters first, and their journey fro...m seaborne origins to the outskirts of the Pantheon is a journey that rests, hidden, underneath their scales. Monsters, but not monstrous, Stheno and Euryale will step into the light for the first time to tell the story of how all three sisters lived and were changed by each other, as they struggle against the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth, vengeance and peace"--

Saved in:

1st Floor Show me where

FICTION/Bear Lauren
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
1st Floor FICTION/Bear Lauren Checked In
Subjects
Genres
Mythological fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Ace [2023]
Language
English
Main Author
Lauren J. A. Bear (author)
Physical Description
xi, 354 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780593547762
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

It doesn't matter whether you are a human or a monster, the bond between sisters is always complicated and the Gorgon sisters are no exception. While they may have their differences, Stheno and Euryale love their sister Medusa. So, when Medusa expresses an interest in experiencing life among the mortals, Stheno and Euryale decide to accompany her on a journey that will take them from a palace in Thebes to an artisan's home in Athens. Along the way, the Gorgon sisters will encounter a range of immortal and mortal beings and experience the full panoply of human emotions. But will these experiences bring the Gorgons closer as sisters or break them up forever? Inspired by a disparaging reference to the other two, lesser-known Gorgons, debut novelist Bear has artfully fashioned an entrancing tale that not only perfectly captures in poetic prose both the fabled glories and gritty realities of ancient Greece, but also features a trio of sisters, who, despite being mythological beings, seem all-too real and relatable by virtue of Bear's gift for incisive characterization.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The most recent addition to the burgeoning canon of feminist reimaginings of Greek myths, Bear's debut is immersive but not exactly groundbreaking. She turns the focus onto Medusa's immortal sisters, the largely forgotten Gorgons Stheno and Euryale, following the pair from birth and chronicling their transformation from beautiful immortal maidens into reviled, snake-haired monsters. This long view of their lives should provide ample chance to get to know Stheno and Euryale deeply, but a lack of fleshed-out interiority leaves this opportunity somewhat squandered. Indeed, the sisters' motivations are at times baffling as they navigate the rivalries and jealousies of Olympus, as when Euryale betrays Medusa to Poseidon with little explanation. While this fickleness is in keeping with myths of Greek gods as notoriously petty and mercurial, it also keeps readers at arm's length from the heroines. Still, Bear offers an enticing plunge into the legends of ancient Greece. Mythology buffs will gobble this up. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Aug.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

DEBUT Bear's feminist reimagining of Greek myth allows Medusa's forgotten fellow Gorgon sisters, Stheno and Euryale, to powerfully reclaim their voices and individuality. The combination of the sisters' story with other familiar mythological figures, as well as new faces and tales, coalesces into a unique, rich whole. Journeying from the depths of the ocean to the palace of Cadmus, each sister bears witness in the story but also comes into her own. Medusa, a survivor of rape who is punished and demonized after assault by a powerful man, will feel regrettably relatable to modern readers. Both sisters try and fail to protect the mortal Medusa, whose beheading by Perseus is foreshadowed repeatedly. Told in alternate chapters between Stheno and Euryale, the narrative is made simultaneously gripping and heartbreaking by its strong voices, foreshadowing, poetry, and asides. Through faith and love, music and motherhood, sex and art, all three sisters find their own ways to join the world, tell their stories, and leave their mark. VERDICT A must-read for Greek mythology fans seeking new depth in their tales and those who enjoyed Madeline Miller's Circe or Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls.--Katie Lawrence

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

FIRST EPISODE Stheno The way of sisters is more arcane even than the ways of gods. -Erastus of Athens, "The Theater of Sisterhood" First you must accept that monsters have families. My mother and father, two ancient sea deities of notorious danger, gave me eight siblings, but we were not raised together. Couldn't be, for we were separated by more than birth order-by our physical shape, our otherworldliness. Human families, by comparison, are so simple. Maybe one child has brown hair, the other blond. Eye color may range over shades of blue. Oh, how mortal parents dramatize these trite differences! Discussing in laborious detail how one learned to walk a whole month before another! Inconceivable! In my family, some of us had tails. Deino, Enyo, Pemphredo, Echidna, Ladon, and I share parents, but Medusa and Euryale are my sisters. Just as the Graeae were born together, so were we Gorgons. We would not be called the Gorgons, however, for many, many years. My grandparents were primordial beings, the sea and earth themselves, present at the creation of the world. This union between Gaea and her second husband-her own son Pontus-produced my parents. My father, Phorcys, married his sister and female counterpart, Ceto, and all their progeny came to life during the Golden Age of the Titans, well before Zeus was hidden in a mountain cave on Crete and Cronus swallowed the changeling rock. Yes, I watched Zeus release the monsters of Tartarus and conclude the ten-year campaign against his father, victorious. His lightning bolts became the harbinger of a new era, the Silver Age, where he was lord. Though well hidden from the fray, I also witnessed the Titans meeting their punishments. Prometheus and the eagle. Atlas and the world. I should have paid closer attention when these so-called Olympians, denizens of the highest mountain, attacked those who wronged them with dogged maliciousness. Maybe then I would have been more prepared for how they treated the rest of us. On days when I'm especially cynical, I find it almost laughable that I am older than both Poseidon and Athena, who would wreak such havoc upon my life. No respect for elders in the immortal community, I'm afraid. But then again, so much of age is attitude, and it took me far too long to acquire one. I sound just like my mother. That happens to immortals, too, when we become old. And I'm getting ahead of myself. I do that sometimes. Time holds little consequence when you occupy forever. The story of our birth, then. My mother, Ceto, resided in a watery cave beneath Mount Olympus, connected to her precious seas through endless tunnels and labyrinthine streams. Though my father adored his wife, he did not attend her labor-a messy, menial process, which he considered a female's work. And for reasons inexplicable-both then and now-matters of the womb are unpalatable to masculinity. I have viewed battlefields covered in unspeakable gore, but I have seen delivery beds far, far worse. I am extremely old. At my mother's side stood her first set of triplets, the Graeae, or gray women. Another trio forced to sacrifice their individual identities for group nomenclature. Born with gray hair and skin, Deino, Enyo, and Pemphredo shared one detachable eye and tooth. I never found them ugly, despite that deficiency. Their gray faces were more interesting than unpleasant, and unlike my sisters and me, the Graeae had a gift: the modest ability for prophesy, to guide those who wander or are lost. Though if they ever deigned to advise us in those early days, we certainly didn't listen. When Ceto's contractions commenced, my mother summoned Doris, the wife of her other brother, Nereus, for Doris bore the nearly fifty Nereids and thus had plenty of experience with labor. Still, complications arose. I emerged first, en caul-within the protective sac indicative of my immortality. My aunt ruptured the bubble and released me, red-faced and stoic, upon the world. Doris smacked my bottom with her aquamarine hand to summon tears, but I refused to cry. I frowned at her repeated efforts, bringing Ceto great felicity. "This one will be unforgiving!" she laughed between bites, for our mother ate the caul of all her immortal children. With jelly dripping from the corners of her mouth, Ceto named me Stheno, for she knew, even then, that I would be strong. Euryale followed moments later, screaming incessantly-even within the bloody veil-demanding attention with her first breath. Another family might have greeted her with the affection she so obviously needed, but our callous community only grimaced. "Make it stop," muttered Deino, no doubt wishing she also shared a retractable ear. Though separated by mere heartbeats, Euryale would always be my younger sister. We had to organize ourselves somehow; all living beings crave hierarchy, and we were no exception. "How do they look?" our mother asked, straining to see her new daughters as her older ones performed the rites of delivery, washing and swaddling. "Ordinary," answered Pemphredo on a sigh. "Fins? Fangs?" "None." "Talons?" wondered Ceto, riding a hope. "Not even a sharp nail. Ten fingers, ten toes. Two eyes." Ceto snorted, then winced as she clutched her lower abdomen. "Doris! I feel another!" This last baby, however, refused to drop. "It is breech, I think," worried Doris, removing red hands from my mother's birth canal and pushing green hair out of her eyes with a forearm. "I felt a foot." "Then go in and grab it!" hissed Mother, gnashing her razor-sharp teeth. Ceto wasn't only the goddess of the largest sea creatures, but also the most lethal ones. "The little demon is destroying me!" Poor Doris shoved an entire arm's length into my mother's belly, grabbed the baby's leg, and yanked. When Doris would later recount the story, she claimed the din of my mother's shrieks blurred the boundary between life and death. The babe, however, arrived in this world the same way she would leave it. Voiceless. She was small and bluish with a shock of dark hair and no caul. A serpentine umbilical cord coiled lethally about her head and neck. A being born in conflict with itself, choked by its own lifeline. "Dead," murmured Doris, with greater surprise than sadness. For my kind, death is more a novelty than an emotional experience. Most of us lack the requisite empathy. Soft hearts aren't meant to last forever; it is why immortals grow selfish and cold. Yet Doris was softer than most, and she held the lifeless babe gently while untangling the cord. "What a shame," she lamented. "Three would have been a nice number." Pemphredo, commanding the communal eye, ran a hard look over the cradled corpse, crown to toe, and her lips tightened. She snatched the tiny baby from Doris's arms and tossed it into the abyss. Doris yelped. "Daughter!" upbraided our mother, slamming fists against the miry stones of her cavern. "I would have liked to see it before you fed my beasts!" Pemphredo shrugged, for she was not inclined to apology. There had been an ominous aura to my youngest sister, and Pemphredo felt only respite to be rid of the pernicious little presence. Besides, our kind did not romanticize babies. You had to be strong to survive in such a world, and this one was clearly weak. "You really are vicious," remarked Ceto with some admiration, exonerating Pemphredo's transgression. "Show me the other two, at least." Deino and Enyo brought Euryale and me into the moonbeams that descended from the cave's natural skylights, casting our neonatal features in an opaline glow. "They are common." A failure. Later, we would be called "human form." No physical deformities, no aberrations of color. We were my parents' most conventionally beautiful offspring-cherubic, even-and, thus, their least impressive. "They are lovely," corrected Doris, overcompensating. "And their eyes are so unusual!" "Indeed," Ceto responded sadly, inspecting the four miniscule orbs staring up at her expectantly. Mine were red ocher and Euryale's shone amber. Our mother gave them half a breath of consideration-and tried to find some satisfaction-when the tunnels began to shake, rattling loose stones and dirt from the walls. "Stitch me up, Doris, my husband comes!" Our brief chance at being special come and gone. Pemphredo threw the remains of afterbirth to my mother's white-bellied shark, who lingered in a nearby pool, while Doris rinsed and tidied my mother's lower half. Ceto, already beginning to heal, prepared herself for the arrival of my father in his seal-led chariot. "Bring them to me!" she ordered, flapping her arms impatiently. Deino and Enyo dutifully-blindly-passed us to our mother, who quickly assembled a maternal tableau: a babe propped in the bend of each scaly arm, her own head tilted downward in a vain attempt at demure. However, to Ceto's disappointment, it wasn't Phorcys emerging from the quaking subterranean depths, but rather, my other sister, the she-dragon Echidna. Half speckled serpent, half maiden, Echidna was-at that time-my parents' most prolific issue. She resided in the fetid, slimy waters of the most arcane depths below the earth. With her monstrous storm-giant consort, Typhon, Echidna birthed some of the most profligate abominations on land or sea: the Hydra, Cerberus, the Chimera, and the Sphinx. Ceto respected nobody, but Echidna at least commanded my mother's attention. And at that moment, Echidna made quite the entrance, heaving with anger, the disposed baby pressed tightly against her chest. "Who did this?" Echidna demanded, seething, her black eyes darting between Doris, Ceto, and the Graeae. "I did," responded Pemphredo, insouciant as always. I would later nickname her the Wasp, for she seemed both free of fear and full of sting. "We did," corrected the other two Graeae, in unison, for it was innately understood-even then-that our family's triplets elicited collective punishment. "I understand your vision is limited, gray sisters, but your one eye fails you. This infant lives and breathes." Our mother gasped-I imagine with some amusement. "Pemphredo, you wretch! Hand her to me, Echidna! Now." Of course, I hold no natural memory of this day, but each time Doris recounted it later, she would pause at this part-linger on the lone heartfelt moment-for Echidna did not want to release the baby. Connections form quickly in my world. Love can be found at first sight and enmity even earlier. The bond between Echidna and my youngest sister was adamantine, instantaneous. Only reluctantly, and with much haggling, did she surrender the child to her rightful mother. Many times, I have wondered how the trajectory of our lives might have curved if Echidna refused-even if she kept only the one of us. Are we so attached to our fates? To our catastrophes? Echidna, after all, would suffer so much more than she deserved. My mother blew her salty breath into the little face, and the baby's eyelids parted, revealing eyes as green as peridot. "She is different, somehow," Ceto noted, comparing the salvaged babe to my other sister and me. "This one is changed, in a way I can't describe." "She is mortal," Echidna claimed. "Her immortality was stillborn." "Unusual," murmured Ceto. "But possible," added Deino, yielding the wisdom of the eye. "She was not en caul. She will die." "Of old age. Or sickness," elaborated Enyo. "Or murder," finished Pemphredo. "You see her future?" "Not clearly," Deino replied. "We cannot tell how she will leave this world." "Or when." "But she will leave it? You are certain?" Pemphredo nodded. "Kill the baby now. It will be a mercy." It was an argument born of the most abject pragmatism, and echoed by the other Graeae. "What can a life mean for one who will die among those who cannot?" wondered Enyo. "This babe will always be at risk," reasoned Deino. "It will be unfair to the other two sisters, futile, like yoking them to a broken plow." Ceto deliberated. She operated within her two natures, made manifest in the twin leviathans flanking her at all times. Sometimes she was a whale, tribal and sage. At other times she was a lone shark. Bite first before you are eaten. "Your daughter lives," contended Echidna. "Infanticide, especially within a family, is an act of great darkness. An anathema, even among our kind." Ceto pursed her lips. "And what does Nereus's wife think? Do you side with my gray children or my sea dragon?" Doris shook her head, wisely abstaining from the family's division. "All your children offer cogent counsel, but you are the mother. It is your choice." Echidna, intrepid and fervent, locked eyes with Ceto. "As such, you will bear the punishment." It must have been quite a sight: two monsters, mother and child, engaged in a war of wills. "If you do not make your claim," finished Echidna, "I will keep her." And it was this statement that spared my sister from becoming chum. I suspect my mother made the decision mostly out of intrigue: What was it about this divisive baby that inspired Echidna's advocacy, her attachment? "I will acknowledge this mortal, who is somehow a product of me and my brother-husband." Ceto laid us babies upon a bed of woven seaweed, and we squirmed into our familiar positions. Reunited by touch and feel. "Whether she be an honor or a curse, let none of you harm her." And Ceto flicked her wrist, decree delivered. Echidna lowered her head, as pleased as the Graeae were jealous and Doris was eager to leave. "What will you call them?" "Stheno," Ceto began, like the opening of an invocation, as she touched our brows. "Euryale." And she paused, lingering on the third infant-the babe who almost wasn't. Ceto bared her teeth. "And the little queen." Pemphredo scoffed. Then Ceto whispered the name that would become lore when it was still only a name, nothing more. "Medusa." Excerpted from Medusa's Sisters by Lauren J. A. Bear All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.