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Tales from Mnemosyne retells Classical myths, largely known
from Ovid, in the voice and tradition of an Appalachian storyteller,
in this case, the goddess Mnemosyne. As the goddess of Memory and
mother of The Muses, she is uniquely qualified to set the record
straight—to tell the true stories without the usual patriarchal
propaganda, all the while keeping things fun and only slightly
blasphemous. Mnemosyne, as a timeless goddess, knows now and then
backwards and forwards and has as much to say about the here and now
as way back when. These fourteen tales include the most famous—Daphne
and Apollo, Europa and Jove, the Birth of Athena, Cupid and
Psyche—along with some too-often-forgotten ones, such as Tiresias and
his daughter Manto, and Oenone, the abandoned wife of Paris. Charon,
appropriately, concludes the proceedings.
Reviews
Danvers presents a series of fourteen tales from classical myths, as
if told by an Appalachian storyteller. Mnemosyne, who tells the tales,
is the goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses. But in Danvers’
telling, she is a brothel-keeper in a small town somewhere in hill
country—whoring is about the only thing women who aren’t interested in
marrying can do there, she says. And as fortune would have it, almost
everyone important in the vicinity comes through her door—all the gods
and heroes, re imagined as hill country characters.
As anyone familiar with the doings of the ancient gods will recall,
these immortal characters are by no means what we humans would call
model citizens, so their visits to Mnemosyne’s place are not
surprising. So Jove’s long string of affairs—or “serial rapes,” as
Mnemosyne bluntly puts it—offer plenty of story fodder, with a subplot
of Juno’s reactions. There are plenty of tales featuring the other
Olympians, as well as famous mortals like Orpheus, Jason, and Perseus,
all given a witty and irreverent twist. It probably helps if you know
some version of the originals, but these are delightful in any case.
—Asimov's SF, June-July 2025
ISBN: 978-1-61976-258-9 (13 digit)
Publication Date: Jan 2024
paperback 152 pages
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