The Shadow of Perseus

Heywood (Daughters of Sparta) adds to the wave of feminist retellings of the classics with a vivid if unbalanced account of the Perseus myth. Danae is banished from Argos by her father, King Akrisios, after she becomes pregnant, thanks to a prophecy that a grandson would cause Akrisios’s death. She washes ashore in Seriphos and spends the next 18 years telling her son, Perseus, that he’s the son of Zeus (in fact, his father was a baker who broke into Akrisios’s palace where Danae was cloistered). Medusa, a thoughtful leader of a community of women who have fled male violence, saves Perseus from a snake bite, but rejects his marriage offer, spurring Perseus to kill her instead. Meanwhile, beautiful Andromeda offers herself up as a sacrifice to appease the gods after a jilted suitor’s father blames her for a crop-destroying storm. When Perseus finds her chained to a rock, he frees her, kills her fiancé, and rapes her. With Andromeda imprisoned on his ship, he returns to Seriphos, where developments push him to even more drastic, impulsive behavior. Though the motivations behind Perseus’s volatile behavior aren’t really explained, Heywood ably imagines how the clever, strong female characters build their lives alongside vindictive and destructive men. This is enjoyable, but it doesn’t break new ground. Agent: Sara Keane, Keane Kataria Literary. (Feb.)