I got the chance to have a chat with author Lauren J.A. Bear about her debut novel, Medusa's Sisters an epic retelling of the story of the Gorgons and their lives.
Hi Lauren, thank you so much for agreeing to talk about Medusa’s Sisters. I finished the book yesterday and absolutely loved it.
Oh, I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Honestly, it means everything to me when I hear that these stories are resonating with readers.
I was drawn to your book because I was one of those girls who grew up finding mythology fascinating, especially Greek mythology. I remember watching things like Jason and the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titans as a kid and being wowed by them. Did you grow up as a fan of myths and legends, and if so which ones most appealed to young Lauren?
Absolutely! When I was in third grade, my dad bought me a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology – I still have it, bruised and battered (beloved!) though it may be. My favorite hero was definitely Atalanta, but I despised her ending. It just seemed so incongruous that this mighty warrior could be felled by shiny objects. I also adored Athena, which is interesting because of how I portrayed her in Medusa’s Sisters. Was this my ‘kill your heroes’ moment? Perhaps!
Before reading your book I wasn’t even aware that Medusa had sisters, as her myth seems to so overshadow those of Stheno and Euryale. How much did you know about them before deciding to create this story, and was that general lack of knowledge about them that most people have a driving factor to make the book?
I spoke with Haley Lerner at GBH News (in Boston) before the book came out, and she told me that as a child she was in a Perseus play. She was cast as one of the Gorgons and she had no lines. I thought, what an absolutely perfect anecdote for the plight of Medusa’s sisters!
The idea for the story came to me during a late night feeding session with my infant daughter, my middle child. Before I went on maternity leave, I had been teaching my sixth graders about Greek mythology so I think I had gods and goddesses percolating in the back of my overly-caffeinated and severely sleep-deprived brain. And I had the thought: Medusa was one of the Gorgons, but who were the others? I checked Wikipedia (as one does) and found a quote from a classical scholar calling Stheno and Euryale “mere appendages.” This was devastating to me. Here I was, holding my brand-new daughter, and the very idea that any woman could be seen as an appendage, as someone who doesn’t matter, did not sit well with me. I needed to know more about these Gorgon sisters and it became a passion project. I spent years poring through primary source materials looking for them in the mythological record. When I found very little, I felt this call – this summoning from the Muses! – to compose a more empowering narrative.
Everybody – fictional or real – has a voice and a story worth telling. By giving back power to figures from our oldest stories, I think we remind ourselves to consider who holds storytelling power and agency in the present.
In the stories that most people know about Medusa she’s often portrayed as being deserving of the punishment that she receives from Athena, and she’s made out to be a monster. Your book does things very, very differently, and there are some amazing twists to the story leading up to that point in the narrative. Were you at all nervous about changing the established myths to fit your own story, and at what point did you decide to change the relationship between her and Athena?
Of course. Medusa is an icon and there are so many preconceived notions of who she was. Typically, the image of Medusa is either sexy or angry. I didn’t want her to be simplified by either one of those labels. My Medusa is kind and curious.
There is definitely female rage in this story, but I gave it to Stheno and Euryale instead..
The book uses different points of view depending on the chapters of the story, and Stheno gets a lot of focus as the main fist person narration, and much of the story seems to be told through her perspective and how she views her other two sisters. What attracted you to her character and made her such an important part?
Stheno is the older sister and I am an older sister, so I related to her immediately. To authentically create these characters, I had to consider how their mortality would affect their dynamics. What would it feel like to be a part of a triplet where you know, from birth, that one sister will die and the other two will live forever? It immediately throws off any chance of balance between the three. How would that alter dynamics? For Stheno, this means that she must protect Medusa. She prioritizes their youngest sister, ensuring that Medusa gets the life she wants. But Euryale feels only resentment – that she is held back by Medusa, that Medusa is more important. Also, because Stheno is a survivor, I knew she merited a first person voice. And access is a privilege. Euryale is a prickly character; she’s not going to give herself away to just anyone! She needed a third person voice, one that is more closed-off to the reader.
At the end of the book you talk about changing some parts of the myths, of altering relationships and origins slightly. With parts of the book sticking close to established myths, and others doing their own thing, was it a hard balancing act at all, did you ever feel that you had to be careful how much was a re-telling, and how much was new?
It is definitely a fine line! Because there was so little information about the Gorgons in the mythological canon (besides the Perseus story, of course), I made a decision to remain close to the accepted details of that tale. But that alone would never fill a novel. I needed to create a birth story that would explain why one sister was mortal and then explain how they got from the monster-born depths to living in Athens. Also, the Gorgons and Perseus are one of the earliest myths in the timeline. The Athens they visit is pre-Pericles, pre-Parthenon. That also influenced what other myths they could logically interweave with.
And without giving too much away, I found Euryale’s name listed as a mother so I knew her child would also feature into the story.
I needed the story to appeal to modern readers without sounding overly modern. The sisters were never going to talk in slang! I used poetry and the rough format of a Grecian tragedy to emphasize the ancient setting and source material.
Your story never made any of the three sisters into the monsters that they’re often made out to be in other stories, Medusa isn’t the snake bodied murder from Clash of the Titans for example, and there are times in the book where they forgo seeking revenge, and times when their violent actions feel hugely justified. Was it difficult to make characters that so many see as purely monstrous into sympathetic and understandable people?
I never found evidence of Medusa being this murderous beast. If anything, she is a killer only once she is disembodied, once Perseus takes her head and uses her as an object in his own quest for vengeance. I wanted to separate her from the violence she perpetuates against her own free will. Stheno, on the other hand, has no qualms about killing anyone who tries to hurt her family.
Family is a big theme in the book, not just the sisterhood that exists between the main characters. Parenthood comes up again and again across the narrative, from the sisters mother being uncaring and uninvolved, to women constantly being put in danger because of their children, to Orion being a hugely important part of the story’s later chapters. I believe you had a child at the time of writing the book, so was this something that you had a personal connection with?
Yes! Every scene with Orion is my little boy – I get emotional even thinking about it! Orion is very much based on him – the curls, the wildness. Stheno’s anxiety for Orion is so real; her fears are ones I’ve articulated or I’ve heard from the people around me.
Family is at the core of this story, absolutely. Specifically, the tension between giving love and receiving it, and how forgiveness operates within loyalty. The sisters never say they are sorry, but they are redeemed by their love.
Your book doesn’t shy away from taking a harsh view on the gods of Olympus, and there was a moment in the book where it hit me that the gods were nothing more than petulant children at best, treating everything else that existed as their playthings. Was this a view of the Greek gods that you had before coming to write the book, or did it evolve this way to best serve your version of this story?
This book is a scathing critique on systems of power, on the corruption inherent to absolute power, to a group – be it male or female – that operates without impunity. Going into the story, I knew the male gods were extremely problematic and I was not going to shy away from that, but as the plot developed I realized I couldn’t let the goddesses escape blame. What Hera does to victims of her husband, how Athena treats Medusa, deserves criticism and discussion.
I thought a lot about justice and the difficulty of pursuing justice/vengeance against absolute power.
What was your writing process for Medusa’s Sisters like?
I am an old-fashioned soul; I handwrite most of the first draft. I started this way because my kids were home during Covid and I couldn’t be on a laptop all day. A notebook is much more portable – it can do tummy time and the playground and Lego! Now, it’s become my preferred method of drafting. There’s something about long hand that forces a pause. My writing is more thoughtful, more lyrical when I write this way. On my computer I think I rush.
Were there any other figures or stories from Greek myth that you almost put into the story but decided to remove for any reason, or that you’d possibly like to write about in the future?
I considered bringing Stheno into the Trojan War after she leaves the island, but then I loved the unknown, the open possibility of where she might go next. Allowing the reader to imagine for themselves. I’d love to do more with Pegasus, just because he’s so iconic and only appears briefly in my novel.
Retellings of myth and legend is a genre that never seems to go out of fashion, and people are always interested in expanding these stories, and on seeing new versions of them. What about these stories do you think makes them endure so much, even after all these centuries?
I believe we are storytelling animals. Our love – our hunger – for narrative is part of what makes us human. If it’s not human nature by now, revising and revisiting the stories we’ve been told is certainly an ingrained human habit. It’s hardly a new trend; it’s how we bring the past with us into the future, amending and translating old tales for a modern audience. We change, add, delete, pivot, and reinterpret, both to answer old questions and ask new ones. I think stories must adapt as humans do to survive.
Can you give us any kind of tease as to what you might be working on next?
I sure can! My next novel Mother of Rome is slated for a summer 2024 publication. It’s a mythical retelling of the Rhea Silvia myth, the mother of Romulus and Remus and Rome before it was Rome. I’m working on revisions as we speak! And after that, I’m planning something romantic, but that’s all I will say for now. ;)
Thank you for such a thoughtful interview! These were beautiful questions, and it was an absolute pleasure to talk about Medusa’s Sisters on such a deep level. I am so appreciative!
Check out more about Lauren J.A. Bear and her work at her website.
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