Metamorphica

by Zachary Mason

In the tradition of Zachary Mason’s bestselling first novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey – where he recast episodes from Homer’s masterpiece – Metamorphica now reimagines Ovid’s epic poem of endless transformation, Metamorphoses. Just as the Roman poet reinvigorated the Greek Classical legends 700 years after Homer, so Mason now gives us a radical and exciting renovation of those myths, 2,000 years after Ovid.

It retells the great stories of Narcissus, Orpheus, Persephone, Icarus, Midas, Medea and Actaeon, and strings them together like the stars in constellations – with even Ovid himself entering the narrative. It’s as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino – or artificial intelligence – and brought glimmering back into our world. Metamorphica re-engages with the elemental power of the ancient shape-changing gods by keeping their essences while rewriting their stories. It is this extraordinary narrative approach that is so thrilling; we watch as the author extracts more and more out of the original legend – adding infinite perspectives to narratives we thought we knew. Mason understands that the great myths are parables – always in flux, always relevant – always throwing shards of light from the morning of the world.

Genres: Mythology, Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Greek Mythology, Classics, Retellings

282 pages, Hardcover

First published July 10, 2018

About the author

I live and work in California.

Reviews

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:

Zachary Mason, who retold Homer’s story of the wanderings of Odysseus in his well-received 2007 debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, takes on Ovid‘s epic narrative poem Metamorphoses in his latest work, Metamorphica (2018). Mason distills Metamorphoses’ over 250 Greek myths into 53 brief stories, including the tales of Arachne, Daedalus and Icarus, Philemon and Baucis, Narcisssus, Achilles, Midas and many more.

Metamorphica is a loosely connected collection of retold myths more than a cohesive novel with a single plot. It’s rather fragmented, both as a collection and within the stories themselves, many of which are of the “slice of life” variety. But lovely and elegiac writing marks the whole set, and each individual story is a well-crafted jewel, focusing the reader’s eye on its own individual theme and distinct characters. Mason focuses on the characters’ psychology and motivations: pride, revenge, love, greed, power and other timeless passions that resonate in both the ancient Greek settings and in our modern world.

The theme of transformation or metamorphosis also frequently resurfaces in these tales: Scylla was a beautiful sea-nymph who is now a man-eating monster; King Minos spends years pursuing his vanished friend (and prisoner) Daedalus, becoming a changed man in the process. Pentheus, a disciplined man dedicated to his duty, has a life-changing encounter with Dionysos, the god of transformation. When Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to appease Artemis so she will release the winds to allow the Greek armada to sail to Troy, his wife Clytemnestra is never the same afterwards:

… I remembered how he’d washed his hands in a fountain after killing her with the look of a man relieved to have put a difficult task behind him, and my mind ignited like dry kindling; suddenly I was empty of love, and had no purpose in life but to be his undoing. I’ve been waiting a long time for my husband to come home.

Chilling!

Mason reinvents the Greek myths liberally in several of these stories, leading to some unexpected but logical twists. Midas, for example, invents the concept of coin money rather than having the magical power of turning everything he touches into gold. Icarus, with his homemade wings, dashes himself against the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere rather than melting his wings by flying too close to the sun (though his fate in Mason’s story is quite different). Orpheus ventures into the underworld to win his lover Eurydice back from Death, but comes to a surprising realization about her as they climb through the cave toward the sun.

Although these stories are relatively independent of each other, they’re still interrelated, tied together by Greek mythology themes, some recurring characters, and a fascinating star map that visually mirrors the structure of Metamorphica, with each star named after a different story or character in the book. The map is divided into seven sections, with each section and its (imaginary, I’m fairly certain) constellations matching up with a different part of Metamorphica. Mason explains:

Lines are narrative connections which form constellations.

A story’s distance from the center increases with its distance from primordial time. The outermost ring is the end of the age of myth, which is the aftermath of the Trojan War or shortly thereafter.

I strongly recommend Metamorphica to any student or fan of Greek mythology, or readers who appreciate lyrical writing and fantasy that tends toward the somber and introspective.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for review. Thank you!!

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very pleasant surprise.

Now, I should admit I'm already a big fan of Ovid's Metamorphoses, so when I learned that there was a briefer, even distilled version of them, I got extremely enthusiastic.

The trend toward retellings of old myths has been an overall positive thing. I've read a few that weren't all that special, while some frankly blew me away. This particular one had no axe to grind except to illustrate humanity and the humanity of gods in a universal way.

Even better, this book gave us some expertly-turned evocative prose/poetry with an eye and ear toward the modern audience, neither forgiving or forgetting the faults of the past or ourselves.

In other words, it's a true rendition of the original, only distilled and sharpened.

It was truly effortless to read and what it lacks in depth for all these many personages of Greek mythology, it more than makes up for in crystal-clear windows into their souls.

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 2 out of 5]

43. Metamorphica (audio) by Zachary Mason
Readers: Bronson Pinchot, Kevin Kenerly, Robertson Dean, Will Damron, Xe Sands, Amy Landon, Kate Reading, Robin Miles
published: 2018
format: 6:31 Libby audiobook (~181 pages, 304 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Library
listened: Aug 8-16
rating: 2½

A very recent promising release with some super positive professional reviews, a beautiful hardcover (which I've only seen as pictures), and, for audio, an elaborate audiobook cast with several very good readers. I feel bad not joining the party and lumping on the praise.

Mason has a nice idea and poetic writing style. He uses Ovid as inspiration and re-writes an expansive variety of mythological stories in his own way. He changes the stories in ways he likes, and presents contemporary sounding voices, mostly in the style of first person confessionals of a sort. He includes notes with explanations for some of the story changes he chose.

I liked revisiting all these stories, but I never took to how Mason tells them. Worse, I got bored and annoyed. But I can't say they were bad, more they weren't for me. I can pick out a few things that I maybe didn't like. The style is unoriginal, the stories feel very similar in many aspects, and so many are open ended with a with characters staring into the vast emptiness and depths of no-meaning, but he only pulls this last bit off with, for me, mild interest...over and over again. And, finally, his poetic voice did nothing for me. He has a nice vocab, but it felt to me like he was trying to sound lyrical but instead managed to sound like weak imitation. So, that's a lot of criticism.

What to make of this? Well, my criticism are very moody and I do hope no one takes them too seriously. I honestly am not sure why I didn't like this book. I'm curious how my response will compare with that of other readers, especially those holding that nice hardcover in their hands.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, I'm the first one to review this, how lovely. Greek mythology, mythology in general really, is a theme I love so much, I’ll revisit in in just about any form. This was, admittedly, something of an experimental retelling/reimagining of some of the beloved myths. I wasn’t familiar with the author’s work prior to this and the description was fairly vague, but what this ended up being is a relatively short collection of myths separated by pantheon divisions and told from a psychological perspective. So basically, while the facts of the stories may be known from other various sources, these versions deal with the emotional and mental states of its characters. And, of course, some of the stories also change the facts around also. The author stated he wanted to create a mythology book he wish he’d found and I suppose at that he succeeds. This was certainly different. And at times quite good. The stories vary in lengths and quality, the longest ones tending to be the best. The shortest ones are mere sketches, but with the word count increasing there come the real stories, the real flights of imagination. The language is lovely, but leans toward the poetic quite heavily. Not quite for me, but the beauty of it is impossible to ignore and certain turns of phrase or imagery were simply stunning. And I liked what the author did to some of the well known myths, quite ingenious and in a way more plausible (not that that’s a requirement of mythology), but the reimagining of Orpheus takes into account the realities of infatuation, Icarus’s flight is circumscribed by laws of physics, Troy is fought over by more personable less iconoclastic characters and for considerably less romantic reasons and so on. Changes, changes, Ovid would appreciate this certainly. So something of a mixed bag, inventive, clever takes on classics wrapped in the dreamy gauze of a narrative. Intriguing though and fans of Greek mythology would find much to enjoy here, plus it’s a quick read and a pleasant way to dream the morning away. Thanks Netgalley.

[Yasmin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Metamorphica contains retellings of Greek and Roman myths, mostly focussing on Ovid's Metamorphoses. I had read most of the original myths before and even translated a lot of them myself. Where this book falls flat for me is how it offers a new view on each myth, but one that doesn't really make a point or even make sense. I feel like when you reimagine or rewrite a myth there should be a point to your changes. A reason. A different meaning you want to offer.

The changes made no sense to me. At the end of the book there's a part called 'notes' where the author gives a couple of lines of explanation on a chapter. Turns out each chapter is only ''oh, what if...''. They're basically musings of the author on the myths. Sure, you can write about that, but it wasn't interesting and after each chapter I was unsure of what I'd just read. They're a bunch of short stories, but with no beginning, middle or end. They're too much like the original myths to offer a refreshing perspective or new insights, but at the same time they have lost the the core and strength of the original. Like I said, this book feels empty to me. There a words that form a sentence and sentences that form a chapter, but that's it.

The writing also made it very hard to get invested in this book. Honestly, the amount of times Mason uses 'and then he... and then they' is completely mind-blowing. Example:

''There was a moment of pain and then he didn't want to move. The grey sky through the black branches seemed unreal and remote - then they jostled him and he saw the wet sand inches from his eyes. He felt what might have been teeth, and then he felt what might have been a knife, and then he was just cold. (...) Then the women were gone, their cries receding into the woods,''

This is how the whole book is written. Not pleasant to read at all. The style is very lyrical as well. At first I thought it was pretty, but have you ever thought that you were reading, but when you get to the end of the passage you realize that none of the words actually got through to you? The style is so pleasing that it's empty, meaningless. There's so much wandering, gazing and floating going on in this book. Waves crashing, snow falling, fire burning, vague and cryptical conversations. I don't want to read 300 pages of that. The whole book is a bunch of adjectives and descriptions. There's no action or fire in the writing; there's no actual feeling in it. The book just seemed to drag on and on.

The chapters that contained myths I didn't know were incredibly confusing and I imagine the book is unreadable if you don't know anything or even much about Greek or Roman mythology. Each chapter is about a different person and the chapters have nothing to do with each other. There's no natural 'flow' from one chapter to another. But they are so vague that they can't stand on their own either. If you don't know the original myth, you will have zero understanding of what's going on. Even the chapters of which I did know the original story often made no sense.

The two stars are because it wasn't horrible, I guess. The writing is pretty, though not pleasant to read for 300 pages. At first each chapter was nice enough, but after a while they all blend together and become meaningless. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.

[Jenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book from the publishing company Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

After having read Mason's previous book — a collection of reimaginings of the Odyssey — last year, I was very excited for his "follow-up" reimaginings of further Greco-Roman myths. Metamorphica didn't disappoint.

Metamorphica is based on the myths found in Ovid's Metamorphoses — although not every myth found there, as the original has 15 books worth of content. Still, in the 53 short stories we get to meet characters both very well-known (Athena and Persephone, Icarus and Orpheus) and ones I had to quickly google (sorry, Tiresias). Each myth is introduced briefly at the start of the chapter and then given a little twist during the retelling. Maybe Hercules isn't quite as heroic as you remember, or maybe Helen of Troy's thoughts are considered instead of her husband's or lover's. In this way, Ovid's "Transformations" are transformed further.

Myth reinterpretations are always pretty hard: go too far and it's a completely different character with a famous name slapped on, go too little and there's no point in not turning to the original. For me, Mason straddles the line well. He has a knack for taking the most important trait of a character and preserving it while changing the rest to fit his new story.

Naturally, in a collection of short stories, some of these work a bit better than others. There was no particular story I disliked, but some did stick with me more than others. I think it's in part a matter of story length: the longer ones, which have a bit more room to breathe, just work better than, say Arachne's one of half a page. And in part it's a matter of myth familiarity. While you don't really have to know the original myth to enjoy the story, it's certainly funner when you do — like a sly little wink between you and the author. I bookmarked all the stories I'd especially want to reread later, and counting them up, it's a little over half.

To no one's particular surprise, most of the ones I liked best were the reinterpretations of women-centric myths. I'll leave Helen's and Persephone's for you to discover for yourself but here's a little taste of Clytemnestra's. Clytemnestra's husband sacrificed their daughter to a goddess so she'd send strong favourable winds when his ships were becalmed and he needed to hurry to Troy.

Afterwards, I was going to hang myself. I had the idea she'd be lonely, down in the shadow-lands, afraid of the caverns, the dark, the other ghosts, that even then she needed me, but as I tied the rope to the rafter I remember how he'd washed his hands in a fountain after killing her with the look of a man relieved to have put a disagreeable task behind him, and my mind ignited like dry kindling; suddenly I was empty of love, and had no purpose in life but to be his undoing. I've been waiting a long time for my husband to come home.

Yep.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Metamorphica. I do think that the previous book, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, was a tad stronger: there's just something very powerful in presenting myriad vastly different stories and interpretations with the same small core set of characters, and unfortunately Metamorphica, which switches focus with every story, can't match that from the onset. But both are very good, and especially if your faves aren't in the Odyssey, I really recommend you try this one. I'm already crossing my fingers that there's going to be a book three!

I especially recommend this book for:

- Fans of Greek myths!
- People interested in myth reinterpretations more generally
- People who like strong, dreamy prose
- Fans of literary fantasy
- Fans of OG fantasy, I'm talking 8th century BC style

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of the audio book version.
I completely lost myself in this re-imagining of the mostly Ovidian myths of Greece and Rome by Zachary Mason. His imagery led me into flights of fancy, to use the old chestnut. I found myself stopping the recording to focus on a phrase or two, just to see where it took me.
These are not the myths I am familiar with, other than the story of Icarus and Midas. Most of them got rushed presentations back in my middle school English class, and I was a solid science girl then, and could not see where mythology and fantasy fit into the real world. Silly thing.
Fortunately, I have a daughter who knows this subject forward and backward. Lambie keeps me woke on where we would be without our mythic traditions.

The narrators of this audio book are very goid, although one or two tend to be a bit sing songy.

I am going to keep this on my shelf and re-listen when I become better acquainted with the stories of Ovid.

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in December 2018, and it has languished on my bedside pile ever since. Waiting. I really can’t say why I have waited so long. I did make a brief attempt, but obviously wasn’t in the right place to see its genius.
So the book has waited, patiently, for three years for me to discover that it is just brilliant. Utterly beautiful and perfectly imagined.

Mason does not try to write Ovid’s Metamorphoses again, but does exactly what Ovid did in the first place, put a contemporary slant on much older stories. He takes the myths and reinterprets as a modern storyteller. I am a huge fan of myths and stories from classical history and mythology, so I am always going to be biased about how great I found these small tales. But in my defence, some of the writing is just brilliant and some of the re-imaginings are perfect.
This is not all myth either. Take for example the ending of the book. Here we see the poet Ovid, exiled from Rome and sent to languish on the Black Sea. He writes a letter to the Emperor Augustus who banished him, and places it in the hands of a courier to take it to Rome. The courier is one of a series who have to make this long and difficult journey. They cross rivers and oceans in all types of weather. Encounter bandits and as the letters on the page begin to fade and be washed away, the first courier learns them by heart to pass to the next and the next. Each time a little is lost. Sometimes they have no language in common.

It isn’t long before the letter has passed out of Latin and into the native tongues of the couriers or of the peoples they ride past – the men who worship fire, the ones who wear peaked caps and live in excavated mountains…Some couriers, carrying the letter only in their memories, find they have no tongue in common with their successors, and for a moment the letter passes out of language altogether and into gestures – they pretend to weep, to wrestle with brigands, to fend off the short, sharp arrows of the Sythians – or even objects – arrows laid in parallel in the dust, a broken plume, stones piled up in the semblance of a city.

I am in awe of the inventiveness and the storytelling. It is at times poetic and, because of the nature of some of the myths, heroic. In his wonderful first book, Zachary Mason wrote of Odysseus in The Lost Books of the Odyssey. Inventing stories to fill the gaps that the surviving manuscript of the Odyssey has lost over the centuries. We know about some of these because the Ancient Greeks painted the scenes on their pottery and wine jugs. Even some of the famous scenes we connect with the siege of Troy, such as the Trojan horse, do not actually occur anywhere in Homer’s narrative. We learn of it from pots and later writers who had access to earlier versions. Mason goes back to some of those scenes from the Trojan war, and in this book we have this epic moment when the great warrior Ajax lands on the beach at Troy:

We sailed to Troy beach and saw the surf bursting beneath the white walls of the city and the soldiers teeming black on the shore. The other Greeks scattered from their welcome of arrows but I lifted my shield and stood braced on the prow; the swift arrows sang a high death song around me and only fell silent when the keel cut sand. I jumped into the swell and was first up the white beach and the sword-web of battle felt like coming home. I felt fear in the foe-men as my spear dowsed for heart’s blood, and as I made wretched widows I was ready to die, but no blade would bite me and soon they went running and I leaned on my spear as kites blackened the sky.

Metamorphica is divided into eight parts under the title of a god or goddess, including some less familiar characters such as Nemesis. Death is also one of the eight. Under each part are several chapters about various individuals, from gods and heroes to characters in the stories such as Helen, Jason or Midas. Some of these stories are no longer than a page or two, while others take time to weave complex tales and retellings.

The story of King Minos is ten pages long. It replaces his golden touch with a growing lust for money, placing it closer to our own world. Midas has a smith melt down the golden items from his treasury, turning them into golden discs on which he scratches his name. He throws the coins to his people, thinking they will stash them away somewhere safe, but it soon becomes clear that they make things easier than having to barter chickens for pottery and he walks through the market place watching his coins become wine or swords or chess pieces or a voyage to somewhere else:

Gold, they say, has no history, as it’s endlessly re-forged and melted down. This came to mind when my coins came back from distant countries, clipped and dented, my image worn past recognition. In the beginning I studied their erosion and scars and tried to infer their recent histories but I stopped when I realised that whatever ships, slaves, cities they had been were no more than the varied forms of a single essence, which is money.

The story of Helen is one of the longer pieces at fourteen pages. I loved its different spin on the original story. She is the princess arriving at the palace of Menelaus, about to be married to the king of Sparta. Everything is new and different:

They lead me to my new rooms where the maids are waiting to meet me and as I have always been happiest with other women I want them to like me but they keep their eyes on the floor as I go from each to each and praise her hair or eyes or hands though many are neither fair nor young. I say, “You are all so beautiful!’ and this calms them but there’re still too shy to speak to me so I ask questions about their children and about their boyfriends, and to the grandmothers I say I’ve heard they juggle innumerable lovers and how do they manage? They smile a little, and look up for a moment, but it isn’t enough, and they’re relieved when I dismiss them, and when they’ve gone I’ve already forgotten their names, and I sit silently for hours in the empty room as my mind fills with plangent whiteness.

This is a beautifully constructed paragraph, with all the contractions of common speech throughout, as Helen tries to make herself out to be just like the maids and then that final line of loneliness using the unfamiliar word ‘plangent’. Meaning beating like waves, but setting her apart with vocabulary and learning, a child of the gods. Daughter of Zeus.
Helen’s life at court is stage managed:

My nights are an endless round of appearances in all the salons and the ballrooms and the colonnades around the gardens, and the chef de protocol directs my motions and even stands behind me and whispers in my ear how kind or cordial or dismissive to be to whatever dignitary or personage, and his instructions become performances, and as I’m stage-managed minutely through every dinner or ball or fête I find myself watching these affairs from a certain distance, emotion moving torpidly across my face when circumstances require a credible show of feeling, for it isn’t mine to feel but only to be seen to feel, and most of all to shine, as at night the great men who have sworn to ignore me struggle not to stare as I stand in the centre of the ballroom while they circulate at a fixed distance, balanced precisely between desire and fear, and it seems I’m the centre not just of the party but of Sparta and all its cities whose lights are constellations revolving around me in the utterly impenetrable and soundless night.

Mason creates this incredible portrait of a woman with no emotion, stage-managed at every turn and unloved by her husband, who is also struck dumb by her beauty. The author prepares the way for the entrance of Paris and so for everything to change. As well as thinking he is the most beautiful man she has ever seen, Helen also gives us this:

When he’s presented to me I look into his eyes and see a stillness and a distance and a contempt that mirror my own, and when I murmur the usual things what I’m really saying is, Everything you see in me is an illusion, a brilliant surface behind which there is nothing but a slight chill…

And that is why I think Zachary Mason is so good. In just a few pages he has captured all we need to know about Helen’s loneliness, solitude and boredom. All boiled down into the phrase ‘nothing but a slight chill’.

[B. Rule · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are haunting, elegiac pieces that use Greek and Roman myths as writing prompts. As in his earlier works, Mason is concerned with modern, Borgesian ideas of identity, paradox, and surreal desolation, and he pumps those themes back into the original stories, sometimes filling them with new life, and sometimes bursting the seams of the original. I wouldn't say all of the pieces are successful, and some of them are too slight to add much to Ovid. But they're all gracefully written and it's nice to re-inhabit the world of The Lost Books of the Odyssey, even if this is a lesser entry. I wish Mason had left out the brief notes at the end though, as they were overly explanatory of process and seemed more than a little pretentious. Almost veering into Eli Cash territory...

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lyricism doesn’t always hit the mark and occasionally falls painfully flat, but I like what he does with Narcissus and Clytemnestra and this exchange between Minos and Daedalus:
“Then I’ll build you a monument in stone,a colossal statue to stand by the harbor, and every man who sails into Knossos will see your face and know your name. Your fame will be written in granite.”
“My face ,” he says, “is a face like any other, and my name is a noise with no meaning.”

Best in small doses.

[Niki · Rating 3 out of 5]

not bad, not bad at all, but a little confusing at times - I'm a real fan of mythology, classic or other - generally I prefer when it's written like stephen fry's mythos, with a lot p tongue in cheek - as I said, not bad at all, a bit too serious maybe

[audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars! favorite chapters were Helen’s, Clytemnestra’s, and Atalanta’s !

[Micah Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written to be sure but a bit light in terms of overall narrative. More of a retelling with great prose.

[Boy Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greek myths are brilliant, what else would you expect from stories that have lasted millennia. However, Mason's telling will either enthrall or bore you depending on your stylistic tastes. It really comes down to whether you like his lyricism and turn of phrase. I feel he's kept the essence of all the stories while still leaving them set in ancient history. Of particular note is the transformation of the Midas touch into the creation of a monetary system, Persephone's curse into an eternal cycle of birth and death, Helen's position on fame and the role one has to play in the public eye, and Clytemnestra's treachery told through her deep pain and perspective. Atlanta's story is also masterful and Mason's concept of her far superior to the magpie version of her in Ovid's original. Mason's own mathematical background also shines through with Daedalus' stories. The contemplation of the infinite was perfect.


What was most impressive however was the way Mason empowered the female characters with a modern female strength beyond Ovid's traditional description. Unsurprisingly the modern feminine power sits well with these powerful ancient characters.


This line from Odysseus 


"Is he the kind to talk in riddles, or love someone who would?"


Will definitely be used as a tool to think through my friendships.


Mason may have given these stories another thousand years of life.

[howmanykingdoms · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5—unsatisfying. longer vignettes were consistently better told and more interesting than shorter ones, writing was pretty but meaningless. little to no distinction between character’s voices made dialogue and story fall flat. overly self-referential and tells not shows to the detriment of the storytelling; postmodernism attempted poorly. most female characters only think about one specific man that they met like once (specifically if that man is odysseus—this is especially annoying for the athena pov vignettes but that’s a personal gripe). it was frustrating to find interesting ideas/images/thoughts in each vignette and then find that they’re never explored.

all vignettes but especially the longer ones suffer from ending lines that are meant to be zinging profound conclusions to the story that refer back to overlooked moments within the story, but that only make each vignette end abruptly and without relish. the conclusions are too brief to take on the fairy-tale-like/mythic quality that is evidently intended by them.

i also wonder at the decision to categories some stories under one god instead of the other; many stories seem like they would be more at home in a different section. maybe it’s a commentary on the similarities between love and death and so on; if it is, it’s poorly done.

favorites: minos, philemon and baucis, narcissus, nemean, jason (somehow), thetis, clytemnestra, midas, atalanta, epistolary. (this may look like a long list but there were 53 vignettes.)

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greek myth, in some form, has lasted thousands of years and even now still holds an intense fascination. They really are seamless, timeless stories. Mason expertly crafted slightly new, subtle retellings of some of Ovid's famous tales, and at the heart of them all is transformation and change. The style is similar to vignette, all very short, brief, but impactful. I really enjoyed the imaginative yet subtle play within each of the stories, the gods present but also floating through each page, abstract and distant. The entire book is very prose like and in many ways hypnotic, like it would be easy to recite these tales around a fire in the black night, on a beach, returning from war, or starting out on a hunt. They seemed very polished, varnished in time because while many of these stories held an edge of the familiar, there was something new and different about them. Mason wrote for a modern writer, using very old stories, and I enjoyed that the most about the book. In some cases, such as Atalanta and Athena, he brushed off the antique patriarchy and added a new modern femininity to them. He didn't try to stuff the stories in a pigeon hole by relying too much on ancient traditions and themes. The themes were very much modern, dealing with desire, fear of death, wonder, love, and change in middle age. I also really enjoyed his characterization of some of the well known entities of ancient myth - Narcissus, Adonis, Tiresias, Death. Each story felt original, unique, but still familiar. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would definitely pick this up to explore again.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Lost Books of the Odyssey was instantly one of my favorite books of all-time. It made me hopelessly devoted to Zachary Mason. I also enjoyed Void Star, but am happy that he subsequently wrote Metamorphica, his version of Ovid and/or Greek myth in general, which has been an amateur hobby of my mine since high school. I’ve read a number of modern takes on the tales, but nothing touches Mason, his deft touch and understanding, and even ability to play with it. These stories are old enough where the versions Ovid told were already well into the retelling, which is what material of this kind is always telling us is exactly the fate of all stories. So it’s good to read someone doing it so well after all this time.

[Xander Paras · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and this is a really cool reimagining of Ovid’s myths and stories. Mason does a wonderful job telling each tale via poetic language but with helpful concision, with most stories only being a few pages long (I’m a total sucker for short stories, so I ate this up). But I feel like he is at his strongest when he deviates most from Ovid’s myths. By changing the stories that Ovid found littered through Greek and Roman culture and writings, Mason is participating in the tradition of metamorphosing ancient stories for a new purpose. Some of his stories work really well, like his tales of Daedalus and Minos, but at other times, I found myself wishing he pushed the stories even further, particularly when centering female characters. Nonetheless, I think he works is inspiring for how one can participate in ancient story telling traditions while bringing something fresh and uniquely their own to these ancient tales.

[Antoinette Van Beck · Rating 4 out of 5]

finally done. oof. this one is dense and it took me eight months of off and on reading to make it through. overall, mediocre takes on the greek and roman myths. the one thing i liked about this volume was the excellent use of first person perspective in some of these stories. i can see myself potentially referencing a couple of them in my high school classes when we talk about narrative writing!

[Liván · Rating 4 out of 5]

Espectacular. Es una colección de cuentos (no sé dónde leí que era poesía… no it sure isn’t) súper interesantes que ahondan en las dimensiones humanas y espirituales de los mitos griegos. Me da pena que el libro esté sólo en inglés, porque creo que serían excelente recursos didácticos en clases escolares de Literatura alrededor del mundo.

[Iván Ferreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble recuento de la cosmovisión griega, invoca mitos de la antigüedad y los tinta con problemas e ideas modernas sin que pierdan su esencia ancestral. El cuento de Dédalo, el de Némesis, el epistolario... fueron increíbles.

"But all, by now, are corrupt, little more than florilegia of ghost stories, quotations out of context, fragments of geography"

[Dillon Patel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting retelling of Ovid’s metamorphoses through short stories. A modern retelling of Roman stories of Greek myths. Easy to read, short chapters, gave an introduction to some classic Greek myths and ones you’ve only heard in passing but retold from the protagonists view.

[Tom Kenis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetic (f)re(e)telling of the Greek myths.
One of the best reads this year.

[Phebe · Rating 3 out of 5]

All sparks, no fire.

[Chaitra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read Zachary Mason's Lost Books of the Odyssey, and I like the premise of these books. There were a couple I wasn't on board with, like Orpheus, but on the whole I liked his reimagining of Ovidian myths. I just wish there was one narrator for the audiobook and not several, because some were great, the others just so-so.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories were reimagined brilliantly and each one was written with brimming eloquence and grace. However, most are cold, uninteresting, and unmemorable.

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was okay the writing was really good

[Emmeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful transfiguration-- full of sharp, fecund grace.

The author's metamorphosis of Ovid's poem is sensuous, visceral, raw, joyful, fluid. Ancient mythologies echo of Borges and Calvino, and become timelessly postmodern. While Mason's first celebrated novel "The Lost Books of the Odyssey" featured predominantly masculine voices, Metamorphica comes alive-- sings, peals, whispers, keens-- with female experience and narrative.

It's a nuanced, lyrical and above all, heartfelt work-- a novel to fall in love with, and to love the world through.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have this image of Zachary Mason strolling about in a gallery of bright shiny toys, examining the hundreds of tales that Ovid left behind to amuse, edify and confound us over the past two millennia. In Mason's playful hands those stories and the gods, demigods and humans who populate them become gambling-bones, fiddle-sticks, golden coins to be tossed, to discover where they might land, what new adventures they might set loose. Some of them turn in upon themselves, becoming swallowed up by the insurmountable spells that were cast upon them in their former lives. Others, encumbered by neither time nor space, continue on their ancient journeys, discovering unforeseen solutions, arriving or departing from the fabled lands that bore them. They may become as timely as this week's headlines or as remote as the edges of the universe. Still others leap away, freed of their thousand-year-old fetters and are metamorphosed all over again.
As a companion piece to Ovid's epic, Mason's book helps us understand that stories are open ended, that the world of the imagination is free-form, bound only by the limits we impose upon it.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Myth should be essential, but often seems schematic. Less a literature of fundamental power than that literature’s echo. The project of Metamorphica is to write the mythology I wish I’d found, much as Ovid did, moving lightly through the ancient sources, taking up what he liked, and reinventing it, as I’ve done with this book.

It’s a time-honored law of Hollywood that movie sequels financially perform better at the box office, simply because audiences are familiar with the characters. There are of course all sorts of inherent storytelling advantages, such as not needing so much character development, so it’s strange how often those sequels turn out worse than the original. Mason seems to be employing the same theory for Metamorphica. And while Borges, the short-story standard setter, normally avoids this crutch, I think I like Mason’s stories more!

What’s particularly cool about Metamorphica is that the themes the stories explore are limited to themes I can imagine Ovid or other classical writers understanding and being interested in. For example, a particularly philosophical story about calligraphy explores the implications of experiencing Platonic idealism the same way a great sci-fi book might explore characters facing the AI singularity. My favorite story entails Dedalus finding transcendence in the discovery of irrational numbers and contemplating their infinitesimal nature (a calamity that ended Pythagoras’s school and killed its discoverer). The story contains this wonderful passage that reminds me of the album cover of Kid A:

But as the first numbers pass his lips, he sees that his answer is inexact, and adds a digit to amend it. But even then, an error remains, so he adds another. And though the error dwindles, it doesn’t disappear even after the tenth, the thousand, the ten-thousandth revision. The line seems to rush toward him. And with great clarity, he sees the scarred, prismatic mountains of the sand grains, as the digits surge by… He struggles at first, as the number pours over him. And is distantly aware the passing of the millionth, and then the billionth digits. And still the progression roars on. As the initial panic subsides, he reflects that the torrent of random numbers is as meaningless, and as comforting, as rain pattering a rooftop. And the digits blow past unremarked. And his thoughts become a grey blur, as his old life comes to seem remote, like a ghost hastening off into evening.

Of course, my rule doesn’t hold entirely. That quote goes on to explore ideas of language encoding into numbers, with a nod to Borges’s labyrinth. Also, I don’t think the Pythagoreans, or even mythological Greeks like Dedalus, thought in a base 10 decimal system.

One of the few books I would read again.