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A review by jesikasbookshelf
Orfeia by Joanne M. Harris
3.0
To put it simply, this just wasn't what it said on the tin. This isn't a gender swapped telling of the Orpheus Myth. It is more of a love child of the Orpheus Myth, the Myth of Demeter and Persephone and the folklore surrounding King Orfeo.
THE ORPHEUS MYTH: Orpheus was a heroic figure from Thrace. He was renowned throughout Hellas for his musical talent - so much so that he was one of the Heroes on the Argonautica. He saves the Argonauts from the Sirens by playing his lyre back at them in what I can only assume is the ancient world's answer to those battles on The Voice. Later in life, Orpheus marries Eurydice. She is unfortunately killed on their wedding day when she steps on a snake in the grass and it sinks all its venom into her ankle. Orpheus, in despair, heads to Hades through the nearest gate to the Underworld. He bargains with Hades and Persephone with all he has -his song. He pleads to the dread royals, points out to them that they understand love, and he makes Hades cry a single tear with the power of his voice. With this, Eurydice is released from the dead...on one condition. Hades, pretty annoyed Orpheus has got one over on him, declares that Orpheus must walk ahead of his wife and not look back at her until they have both left the Valley adjoining the nearest gate to the Underworld. Naturally, this doesn't quite go to plan as Orpheus becomes convinced that Eurydice is falling behind, struggling on that bad ankle. He glances back and she is pulled back to the world of the dead.
KING ORFEO: A child ballad formed of more modern folklore twisted into a rewrite of the Orpheus Myth which is preserved in fragmented form. In this telling Death is replaced with Faerie and the main divergence is the happy ending as King Orfeo manages to get his wife safely home. One can only assume he was better at remembering she knew how to walk.
THE MYTH OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE: Demeter, goddess of the harvest and the seasons, had a child with Zeus, Persephone. One day Persephone is merrily going about her day when she is abducted by her Uncle to be his wife. Standard behaviour. She has just magically disappeared and Demeter searches for her for months on end. Eventually she realises what must have happened and she pleads with Zeus to retrieve their daughter. He agrees on the condition that - IN ALL THOSE MONTHS - Persephone hasn't eaten anything. Again, standard behaviour. Demeter goes to the Underworld to bargain with Hades for her daughter back. Hades rather gleefully produces a sole witness to Persephone having eaten 7 pomegranate seeds in the last 6 months and points out she's happy with him and Demeter should be glad for the couple. Demeter, in what could be described as one of the more reasonable acts in Greek Myth, refuses to accept this logic. Eventually it is decided that as she has eaten in the Underworld, Persephone must remain there for half the year and can return to her mother for the other half. And voila, humanity has an explanation for why plants will only grow for half of the year - the half that Demeter is happy as her daughter is with her.
ORFEIA: There was a point to this, I swear. For the most part I found this writing uncharacteristically 'tell not show'. Within this, overall, the focus is on creeping vines and roses and overgrown cityscapes. Though there is reference throughout the novella to music, it isn't until the end that this comes to have the importance it does in the Orpheus Myth. It reads more as focused on the out of control frustration of a mother searching for her daughter in a world where plant life is also out of control...Orfeia read, to me, for the most part as a retelling of DEMETER. Orfeia searches for her child, the love for her child is woven throughout the novel as Fay struggles to retain her memory, not eat anything in the lands of Faerie and fights the Lord of the Dead for her child back. The novella, like the child ballad of King Orfeo before it, blends the world of myth and folklore together to make something new. It actually adds to the King Orfeo lore in a wonderfully inventive and interesting way. But THAT is what this is - a novella building on folklore that was already a divergent rewrite of Greek myth. A "gender swapped retelling of the Orpheus Myth" would have been a woman so in love with her prematurely departed husband that she battles Death to get him back and fails to follow simple instructions, ensuring that she fails.
I wonder what the author/publisher are trying to say about love with this blurb? That when men do this it is heroic, but for the same kind of heroic journey a woman must be in search of her child and not her husband? Why? Why take away the element of Eros in this novel and replace it with Anteros without acknowledging that shift from Orpheus' love, Eros, to Demeter's, Anteros? Why not just reimagine Demeter in a folklore setting, which is what Fay symbolises in that context with the journey she is on? It is an odd choice to align this with the Orpheus Myth rather than the Demeter and Pesephone Myth, and it completely overshadowed the wonderful building on the King Orfeo folklore that this book did, genuinely, contain. But not everything has to be a revolutionary rewrite - that attention grabbing marketing sells this novel short and, ultimately, offers something it cannot deliver.
THE ORPHEUS MYTH: Orpheus was a heroic figure from Thrace. He was renowned throughout Hellas for his musical talent - so much so that he was one of the Heroes on the Argonautica. He saves the Argonauts from the Sirens by playing his lyre back at them in what I can only assume is the ancient world's answer to those battles on The Voice. Later in life, Orpheus marries Eurydice. She is unfortunately killed on their wedding day when she steps on a snake in the grass and it sinks all its venom into her ankle. Orpheus, in despair, heads to Hades through the nearest gate to the Underworld. He bargains with Hades and Persephone with all he has -his song. He pleads to the dread royals, points out to them that they understand love, and he makes Hades cry a single tear with the power of his voice. With this, Eurydice is released from the dead...on one condition. Hades, pretty annoyed Orpheus has got one over on him, declares that Orpheus must walk ahead of his wife and not look back at her until they have both left the Valley adjoining the nearest gate to the Underworld. Naturally, this doesn't quite go to plan as Orpheus becomes convinced that Eurydice is falling behind, struggling on that bad ankle. He glances back and she is pulled back to the world of the dead.
KING ORFEO: A child ballad formed of more modern folklore twisted into a rewrite of the Orpheus Myth which is preserved in fragmented form. In this telling Death is replaced with Faerie and the main divergence is the happy ending as King Orfeo manages to get his wife safely home. One can only assume he was better at remembering she knew how to walk.
THE MYTH OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE: Demeter, goddess of the harvest and the seasons, had a child with Zeus, Persephone. One day Persephone is merrily going about her day when she is abducted by her Uncle to be his wife. Standard behaviour. She has just magically disappeared and Demeter searches for her for months on end. Eventually she realises what must have happened and she pleads with Zeus to retrieve their daughter. He agrees on the condition that - IN ALL THOSE MONTHS - Persephone hasn't eaten anything. Again, standard behaviour. Demeter goes to the Underworld to bargain with Hades for her daughter back. Hades rather gleefully produces a sole witness to Persephone having eaten 7 pomegranate seeds in the last 6 months and points out she's happy with him and Demeter should be glad for the couple. Demeter, in what could be described as one of the more reasonable acts in Greek Myth, refuses to accept this logic. Eventually it is decided that as she has eaten in the Underworld, Persephone must remain there for half the year and can return to her mother for the other half. And voila, humanity has an explanation for why plants will only grow for half of the year - the half that Demeter is happy as her daughter is with her.
ORFEIA: There was a point to this, I swear. For the most part I found this writing uncharacteristically 'tell not show'. Within this, overall, the focus is on creeping vines and roses and overgrown cityscapes. Though there is reference throughout the novella to music, it isn't until the end that this comes to have the importance it does in the Orpheus Myth. It reads more as focused on the out of control frustration of a mother searching for her daughter in a world where plant life is also out of control...Orfeia read, to me, for the most part as a retelling of DEMETER. Orfeia searches for her child, the love for her child is woven throughout the novel as Fay struggles to retain her memory, not eat anything in the lands of Faerie and fights the Lord of the Dead for her child back. The novella, like the child ballad of King Orfeo before it, blends the world of myth and folklore together to make something new. It actually adds to the King Orfeo lore in a wonderfully inventive and interesting way. But THAT is what this is - a novella building on folklore that was already a divergent rewrite of Greek myth. A "gender swapped retelling of the Orpheus Myth" would have been a woman so in love with her prematurely departed husband that she battles Death to get him back and fails to follow simple instructions, ensuring that she fails.
I wonder what the author/publisher are trying to say about love with this blurb? That when men do this it is heroic, but for the same kind of heroic journey a woman must be in search of her child and not her husband? Why? Why take away the element of Eros in this novel and replace it with Anteros without acknowledging that shift from Orpheus' love, Eros, to Demeter's, Anteros? Why not just reimagine Demeter in a folklore setting, which is what Fay symbolises in that context with the journey she is on? It is an odd choice to align this with the Orpheus Myth rather than the Demeter and Pesephone Myth, and it completely overshadowed the wonderful building on the King Orfeo folklore that this book did, genuinely, contain. But not everything has to be a revolutionary rewrite - that attention grabbing marketing sells this novel short and, ultimately, offers something it cannot deliver.