An incendiary new novel based on the myth of Medusa from noted author
Martine Desjardins
She's been called Medusa for so long that she's forgotten her real name.
She walks with her head down, her face hidden behind her hair to spare
others the sight of her Deformities - eyes so horrible they repel women
and petrify men. She herself never dares to look in a mirror. Driven
from her family home, Medusa is locked up in the Athenæum, an institute
for young "malformed" girls, which stands on the shores of a lake
infested with jellyfish. In this dismal abyss, where Benefactors indulge
in cruel games with their protégées, she gradually discovers the
prodigious and formidable faculties of her ocular Sickenings. The day
when Medusa finally emerges from her confinement, she sows destruction
in her path. But before she can take revenge on the Benefactors who
humiliated her, she'll first have to face the treacherous gaze of her
nemesis - and the deadly gaze of her own Abominations.
Martine Desjardins's chilling and poetic Medusa is a provocative story
of women's body shame and men's body shaming, phallocratic oppression,
and the power of femininity - an inversion of the traditional balance of
power that throws a light on so-called monstrosity.
