Medea

I found this novel every bit as psychologically complex and narratively intelligent as mythical retellings by Mary Renault, such as in The King Must Die: A Novel. 'Medea' offers what few historical novels do: a central character who grows up and changes over the course of the story. The narrative device of having the main characters ostensibly tell their version of the story to an inquiring third party somewhat demotes the reader as the one putting the story together, unlike the effect generated by the sequence of voices that tell a different story in Christa Wolf's Medea. But the story that unfolds is gripping in its emotional realism and the rich detail of a fully-imagined time and place. The section on Medea's early childhood and adolescence, entirely invented by Seymour, is the book's strongest; it offers a picture of a stubborn, clever, and conflicted heroine shaped by very specific circumstances, especially the culture of death perpetuated by her tyrannical father, Aeetes. Without trying to do the work of explaining personality (which Wolf's novel seems to take as its project), this book instead shows the characters in action, in ways that seem completely believable and, in the end, deeply touching. I stayed up all night because I couldn't put this book down.