MESTRA: A Short Story, by Madeline Miller
In December 2021, a klaxon went out across the internet. Madeline Miller, the classicist turned novelist responsible for “The Song of Achilles” and “Circe,” was working on a new book! This time, she announced, her subject would be Persephone: the daughter of Zeus and Demeter and bride of Hades who is cursed to spend half the year in the underworld and half above in the light, bringing forth new life.
But unbeknown to impatient readers, Miller was in the midst of an intractable battle with long Covid, which has made it difficult for her to write. And so one year stretched into five, with no sign of the goddess of spring’s arrival.
In those dark years, “The Song of Achilles” and “Circe” have only grown in popularity, thanks to BookTok and the Hellenistic fervor sparked by this summer’s “Odyssey” adaptation. Finally, like Persephone herself, Miller has emerged from the depths of chronic illness with an offering: not a novel, and not the goddess’s tale, but an entirely different story.
“Mestra” is Miller’s first new piece of fiction since “Circe”; and like her short story “Galatea” (which she published first as an e-book, in between her novels, and then as a hardcover in 2022), this one too takes inspiration from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”
According to myth, Erysichthon, the king of Thessaly, destroyed the sacred grove of the goddess Demeter; as punishment, she cursed him with an insatiable appetite. “Famine worked unabated and his burning appetite was unappeased,” Ovid writes. “Eventually, when all he owned was inside him, only his daughter, Mestra, was left, a girl whom the father was not worthy of.”
In Miller’s version, having consumed or pawned off all of their household goods, Erysichthon sells his lone offspring to a passing merchant for seven roast chickens. Mestra is starving, desperate and terrified. The man has paid for “a weak, thin girl with only virginity and obedience to recommend her”; but in fact Mestra’s virginity has been stolen by the sea god Poseidon in an act of violence.
Terrified that the man will kill her when he discovers this — and that her father, whom she still loves despite his betrayal, will be left to starve — Mestra prays to Poseidon to protect her and is granted the ability to shape-shift.
At first, Mestra’s new power seems like a gift: She turns into a fisherman, escapes the merchant and returns to her father with fistfuls of apples. But his hunger is not satisfied, and he sees in this miracle an opportunity for further profit. (He of course believes the boon is intended for him: The idea of a god favoring a mere girl, rather than a king, is preposterous.)
And so begins a cycle: Mestra transforms, her father sells her, she shape-shifts again, she escapes, and she returns to her father, who sells her right back to his next mark. No profit is enough; no bounty will satisfy. Mestra realizes that a horse is worth much more than a human girl, and so her father has her transform into his most prized mare — whom he ate — and sells her off again. Demeter may have amplified the king’s greed, but its seeds were planted long ago, and it only continues to grow.
Even with its ancient bones, Miller’s tale feels awfully relevant. You can’t look at Erysichthon without thinking of so many other insatiable men who ravage the land, sell bad bills of goods and insist on ever more plunder. And you can’t look at Mestra without thinking of so many other women who are trapped in a cycle of abuse with someone who keeps hurting them, even as they swear that each wound is the last.
The ancient myths are full of women like Mestra — disposable playthings to be exploited or enchanted as gods and men see fit. Miller brings them gloriously to life. The term “feminist retelling” has gotten flimsy with overuse, but if ever a story qualified it is this one. “Mestra” is not a simple revenge tale or a sexy rehash. It is a stark look at heteronormative power structures, at exploitation, at that deeply ingrained reflex to please, even as it hollows you out. It’s a habit Mestra must break if she ever hopes to claim her gift for herself.
To call this a standalone book feels generous — the publisher has billed it, appropriately, as a short story — but it packs a mighty punch for only 65 pages. Miller’s sentences are crystalline, not a word out of place. When things take a final turn from lightly speculative to full-blown horror, it feels both shocking and inevitable.
After such a rich reminder of Miller’s gifts, I was left hungry for more. Sadly, I don’t know when our next full meal from her is coming, or if it ever will. After this brief spring, back into the underworld she goes. But she is not gone; she is just gathering her strength. We must wait to see what will bloom next from the dark.
MESTRA: A Short Story | By Madeline Miller | Ecco | 65 pp. | $15
The post The Author of ‘Circe’ Returns With Another Dark Take on Mythology appeared first on New York Times.
