To be fair, some of the goddesses in “Stone Blind” are hardly more sympathetic than the gods, beginning with Athena. There is also the mortal queen of Ethiopia, Cassiope, who, like Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest,” proves so vain and selfish that the Nereids, a group of vengeful sea nymphs, demand a sacrifice in the form of her daughter’s life. But by the time poor Medusa is decapitated by yet another toxic male — the clueless and naïve yet violent and callous Perseus — readers may feel compelled to decry the patriarchy, while crying along with Medusa’s brokenhearted sisters.
Still, the book is not all tears and bloodshed. Haynes also has a delightfully droll sense of humor, which she brings to bear on her deities. Here is Zeus idly musing on the whereabouts of his perpetually jealous wife: “He assumed that Hera was busying herself turning one of his favorite girls into a cow or weasel or whatever.” Then there is Athena, cajoling a mortal to fight alongside the gods in a war against the giants: “If you do die, I’ll put in a word for you to get a constellation. Promise.”
Less winningly, Haynes’s commitment to providing multiple perspectives, spread out over dozens of short chapters, can leave a reader feeling disoriented, if not perplexed. Suffice it to say that “Stone Blind” is, to my knowledge, the first novel ever narrated in part by an olive grove, a crow and, finally, a severed head.
There are also moments when Haynes comes close to stepping out of the novel completely, as in this jeremiad against Perseus: “The idea that Perseus is a hero is one I have taken exception to since — I can’t even tell you how long it is,” she writes, in the voice of the semi-dead Medusa. “He’s arrogant and he’s spoiled. … He is a vicious little thug.” By the book’s end, readers may begin to suspect that its author takes mythology not only seriously but somehow personally.
I admit that fantasy fiction has never been my preferred genre. Yet by the time I finished this otherworldly cri de coeur, I felt both wiser for it and glad that it had been written. I was also riled up enough to wonder if I was too old to get my first tattoo.
Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels, including, most recently, “Class.”
STONE BLIND | By Natalie Haynes | 370 pp. | Harper/HarperCollins Publishers | $30
