It's All Greek to Me
Mythology retellings are big right now and I'm not sure that it's a good thing
I’ll preface this argument by saying I was a Classical Studies major in college. For those of you who have no idea what that means, essentially I studied the cultures and languages of Ancient Greece and Rome for four years. Hopefully that might lend some credence to what I’m about to say.
Tackling these myths from a modern lens isn’t exactly a new idea. You could point to the blockbuster success series from Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, or Madeline Miller’s beloved, The Song of Achilles, as early signs that this trend would become wildly popular.
Rick Riordan breathed modern life into old stories. He wrote his books for children who didn’t see themselves in classical tales whether it be because of the color of their skin or their gender or sexuality and so much more. Madeline Miller gave voice to the strong LGBTQ+ elements of The Iliad and wrote the love story between Achilles and Patroclus that scholars love to ignore and deny.
Simply put, there was a strong reason to revisit these ancient tales. Madeline Miller struck gold again with the fiercely feminist, Circe, and then things sort of got out of control. Inspired by Miller’s success, publishing embraced the Greek Mythology retelling trend and then some. Off the top of my head I can think of at least ten that are slated for this year alone.
Suddenly we have Jennifer Saint writing books about Ariadne, Elektra, and Atalanta that are boring as all else. Natalie Haynes delivered a great story in A Thousand Ships, but totally flopped with the poorly executed Stone Blind. Pat Barker penned The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy neither of which were very engaging. Everyone and their mother thinks they have something new to add to the myth of Hades and Persephone1 (please don’t even get me started on this one). And perhaps the worst and most egregious of them all is Sarah Underwood’s Lies We Sing to the Sea.
Sarah Underwood wanted to write a sapphic retelling of The Odyssey. This sounds great in theory right? The thing is, she’s never read The Odyssey. Not even a translation of which there are many. Underwood claims it’s too unreadable. Notably Emily Wilson’s recent and beautiful translation was hailed and compulsively readable so there’s that. As author Brandon Taylor put it on Twitter, some people should not be allowed to write books.
The best part of a retelling is the author’s clear love and admiration for the subject material. They force modern viewers to recontextualize a story through a different lens but usually, you’ve at least bothered to read the story first.
Underwood claims there’s a gap in the market for retellings and wants to fill it. She’s spotted a publishing trend and wants to capitalize on it. While that’s not inherently a bad thing, there’s literally zero gap and this trend is tired. It’s become filled with popularized versions of stories written by people who either don’t bother to engage with the original subject matter or don’t actually bring anything new or interesting to the table.
Making a huge exception for the phenomenal Lore Olympus.