Medea

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Retelling of a Powerful Tale
Review: As a devout fan of the Medea story, I was a little doubtful as I opened the book. At first, the heightened language struck me as being counterproductive to the humanity that Wolfe seemed to strive for in the protagonist, but, as the story progressed, I found myself lured in by the characters, the basic approach, and the added details. I thought the chapter by Princess Glauce, a character often avoided or even mistreated in many versions, was particularly insightful. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves this tale or interpretive approaches to traditional mythology.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Retelling of a Powerful Tale
Review: As a devout fan of the Medea story, I was a little doubtful as I opened the book. At first, the heightened language struck me as being counterproductive to the humanity that Wolfe seemed to strive for in the protagonist, but, as the story progressed, I found myself lured in by the characters, the basic approach, and the added details. I thought the chapter by Princess Glauce, a character often avoided or even mistreated in many versions, was particularly insightful. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves this tale or interpretive approaches to traditional mythology.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely first class story telling
Review: How can anyone call this novel flat, I cannot understand. In less than 200 pages, Wolf has brilliantly captured the utter depravity than mankind can sink to through its own bigotry, hypocrisy, lying, selfishness and sense of self-preservation. Wolf has taken Darwin's survival of the fittest theory to its immoral extreme and has exploited the Lacanian objet art to its most devastating use. A society so enveloped in its own sense of emptiness and vileness, leading them to sacrifice a woman as an expiation of its evil, can only be beautifully and tragically rendered by a mistress story teller as Wolf. Atwood's introduction tells no lies, and I highly recommend this reading to anyone who is into the classics, contemporary culture, social studies and philosophy. This is Wolf's first novel that I have read and it most definitely will not be the last.

Rating:
Summary: A Welcomed and Gratifying Reinterpretation of Myth
Review: Margaret Atwood's brief introduction to this novel leads one to expect a feminist revision of the Medea story. Unfortunately, Wolf does not really do anything with the story except resurrect the characters. The story is supposed to be presented from the different perspectives of several of the characters. Chapter titles indicate who is speaking. If we were not told that the fictional narrator had changed, however, we would not know from anything presented in the story. They all have the same petulant, nagging tone. A writer must do something radical with such a story to justify a modern retelling, such as Joyce did with Ulysses. So often, modern writers assume that it is enough to diminish the characters and have them speak in an informal idiom. Wolf presents Jason as simply stupid, and Medea as a carping divorcée. The only twist Wolf gives to the story is to make Medea the innocent victim of false accusations. I guess that is supposed to be the feminist slant! ! . Yawn. Medea is so wonderfully horrific; we do not need this whining, watered-down contemporary version.

Rating:
Summary: The art of telling a story with different points of view
Review: This book is one of the best if not the best Christa Wolf has ever written. It tells the story of Medea in a new uncommon way. It is not only Medea who appears in a different light then known from the myth. What makes me love this book is the way it is told. Nearly every chapter is told by a new person and gives a new point of view. Nevertheless, the story goes on, very smooth. I don't think that the language is difficult you just have to take your time to enjoy it. Of course is it possible to read this novel in one evening but then you would probably miss the atmosphere Christa Wolf created.

Rating:
Summary: Luminous and extraordinarily powerful
Review: Witch, vindictive wife, child-murderer: Medea's reputation throughout the ages has been a nasty one, but she has always fascinated. The brave and controversial writer Christa Wolf abandons the more usual, cautious approach to writing fiction based on myths, instead coming from the perspective of what else might have happened to make people create such a story.

In other words, a cover-up. Wolf's Medea never committed any of the crimes she has been charged with; she is, however, a very convenient scapegoat when things start to go wrong and she becomes too inquisitive about what lies beneath the surface of Corinthian society. Married to Jason, a man from a culture already substantially different from her own, she has fled her home island of Colchis, only to find that the royal house of Corinth hides a secret as horrifying as that of Colchis. In addition to knowing too much, she is foreign to the point of alienness, accompanied by her band of fellow Colchian refugees, and, as a well-respected healer and once powerful princess, a dangerous role-model in a society that prefers its women not to look up or speak. Her explosion into the delicate, corrupt world of Corinth can only lead to frightening results.

Wolf lifts the Medea myth far beyond the story of sexual jealousy and women's rights you will find in Euripides and other sources - with all due respect to Euripides and co., for in fact Wolf has considered them carefully and uses several quotations, from ancient writers to anthropologists, in her multi-faceted approach.

It is a fable about power and the workings of power, political scapegoating, cultural relativism (the passage where a scandalised Jason describes Colchian burial customs is particularly thought-provoking), and even its historical references to a time when the old matriarchal religions were being ousted by male rulers do not stop it resonating throughout the ages. East Germany and the Holocaust come to mind in particular, but it is reminsicent of any country that has not been entirely welcoming towards its immigrants, or has bloody clawing for political power carefully buried behind the scenes, or has tried to quieten its protesting poor and women.

It is also about love, trust and betrayal, not only between men and women but also between women and women; about grief and the terrible need to blame someone when things start to go off the rails. Wolf writes with extraordinary compassion and courage, and although the stream of consciousness style (the story is told by several "voices", ranging from Medea and Jason to Medea's ex-pupil, the court astronomers, and even the Corinthian princess intended as Jason's bride) takes a little work, it is absolutely worth it. Her prose has a wonderful steely strength and light to it; her characters are engrossing in all their shades of humanity and cruelty; her background of ancient Greece is at once glittering in its remoteness and starkly familiar.

Margaret Atwood's Introduction is well worthy of the novel it precedes, discussing the literary background as well as the historical and social themes with her usual wit and thoughtfulness. To quote the end of her introduction,

"'Medea' is no two-dimensional allegory. Like a tunnel full of mirrors, it both reflects and echoes. The question it asks the reader, through many voices and in many different ways, is: What would you be willing to believe, to accept, to conceal, to do, to save your own skin, or simply to stay close to power? Who would you be willing to sacrifice? Hard questions, but the posing of them is the troubling yet essential task of this tough, ingenious, brilliant and necessary book."

[This review refers to the Virago edition]