Stone Blind
the breathtaking Sunday Times bestseller
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Narrated by:
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Natalie Haynes
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By:
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Natalie Haynes
About this listen
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023.
This audio edition is read by the author, Natalie Haynes.
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 X (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.
When Poseidon commits an unforgiveable act against Medusa in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can: on his victim. Medusa is changed forever – writhing snakes for hair and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. She can look at nothing without destroying it.
Desperate to protect her beloved sisters, Medusa condemns herself to a life of shadows. Until Perseus embarks upon a quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .
‘A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy’ – Glamour
'Natalie Haynes energizes the melodrama of ancient Greek gods with a divine level of storyteller’s flair . . . Listeners who enjoy transformative retellings of Greek myths will find much to relish in this production' - AudioFile
Critic reviews
Witty, gripping, ruthless (Margaret Atwood via X (Twitter))
The rollicking narrative voice that energises Stone Blind . . . is a voice that feels at once bitingly (post)modern and filled with old wisdom . . . The Gorgon’s head will take on a new and powerful resonance as a symbol of the way stories can be warped by time. Stone Blind acts as a brilliant and compellingly readable corrective.
Stone Blind is an exceptionally powerful retelling of Medusa's story, an emotional gut punch of a novel. Haynes brilliantly pulls off the feat of seamlessly alternating humour and heartbreak, creating characters that stay with you long after the novel's end. It is a dazzling achievement (Elodie Harper, author of The Wolf Den trilogy)
With this, her third novel based on ancient myth, [Haynes] has found a way of using all her classical erudition and her vivid sense of the ambiguous potency of the ancient stories, while being simultaneously very, very funny
A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy. Haynes makes the classics brutally relevant, and we reckon this one is going to be huge
It is no exaggeration to say that Haynes is the modern embodiment of the best of Homer. She is a proper, classic storyteller, whose linguistic skills and wit will have you hanging on every word
Stone Blind is inventive and playful . . . [and] very funny (Antonia Senior)
Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood and Madeline Miller have all successfully picked at the seams of the traditionally male take on these fantastic tales. But Natalie Haynes’s genius, this time with Stone Blind, her third Greek myth novel, is to not just focus on the female experience of Greek myth but also to add zest, humour and more than a little mischief . . . The ride is gripping, funny and heartbreaking. Love, sorrow, adventure and humour - Stone Blind has it all
What makes a monster is the central question in Natalie Haynes’ wry, spry feminist take on the Medusa myth . . . an earthy, playful yet rage-filled upending of the Greek hero trope
With wit, humanity and extraordinary imagination, Haynes breathes life and meaning into myths as she has done so brilliantly before (most famously with A Thousand Ships). She also shows that monsters can be divine or mortal. Not all heroes wear capes – and not all villains have snakes
Haynes’ clever, empathetic writing transforms Medusa from Gorgon into a girl, who’s a victim of the cruel machinations of the gods and of circumstance (Sarra Manning)
Natalie Haynes has made a contemporary classic out of a classic . . . and it should win prizes (Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch)
There’s real tenderness in Haynes’s portrait of Medusa, a mortal abomination born into a family of divinities, and the efforts of her immortal Gorgon sisters to protect her from herself (Daisy Dunn)
Brilliant as ever!
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But what exactly defines a monster? And a hero? And who gets to decide? This astonishing novel will force you to turn everything on its (severed) head. You already know how the story ends. But you don't know how the story goes.
I had learned about Medusa and Perseus at school, but it wasn't until recently, when listening to Stephen Fry's Mythos, that I learned a bit more about her backstory. Medusa didn't start out as a monster. She was raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athene, and Athene, enraged by this pollution of her sacred place, punished Medusa - not Poseidon! - by cursing her with the snake hair and the lethal eyes thing. So much for Me Too and the sisterhood. Myth or not, that made me angry!
It seems Natalie Haynes is angry, too, and has decided to do something about it. Written from Medusa's point of view, Stone Blind flips the hero-monster dynamic completely around. Medusa grows up with her Gorgon sisters, who love her dearly; she submits to Poseidon (not that she has much choice) because unless she does so, he will attack the mortal girls she watches so wistfully; she may even have allowed Perseus to kill her, because, gentle soul that she is, she does not want to kill him.
And as for Perseus; exactly how much of a hero is he when he is helped every winged step of the way by two gods, sent by his father Zeus, and armed with various magical accoutrements that frankly don't make it a fair fight?
Along the way other myths are fleshed out: Danae and her cruel father; the 'birth' and development of Athene; the rescue of Andromeda. Haynes gives every character a deeper backstory; we understand them, even if we don't always like them. Even the bit parts are luminescent. One of the greatest triumphs is the chapter in which we hear about - but don't 'see' - the moment of decapitation. Who tells us about it? A traditional Greek chorus - of snakes; the ones forming Medusa's hair. Popping up throughout the book, dominating at the end, is an angry, bitter first-person narrator; Medusa's severed head itself, the Gorgoneion.
Haynes reads the audiobook herself, brilliantly. I felt the Gorgoneion was perhaps closest to her own authentic voice; passionate, furious, a cry for justice down the centuries.
I was totally absorbed listening to this book. I will be looking out more of Haynes' work. I've already binge-listened to her podcast!
You won't ever see Medusa as a monster again.
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Just FANTASTIC!
AMAZING
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Told from the perspective of the women characters it is still gloriously faithful to the mythology and doesn't slip into tired tropes.
The best of Natalie Haynes
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Fantastic story and narration
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