In Wake, Siren, her first story collection, Nina MacLaughlin (Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter) reexamines the myths of Ovid's epic poem The Metamorphoses through a lens superheated with feminist rage. The raw, smart, outspoken result practically sears the reader's hands.
MacLaughlin reclaims the voice of almost every female character in the nearly 1,200 lines of the original work. "We don't always know what's inside of us, or what it might take to free that creature from its cage," warns one of the shapeshifting narrators of these 34 stories. Sea-nymph Galatea confides in her best friend Scylla about the e-mails from her stalker, a cyclops, threatening her and her boyfriend. In a therapy appointment transcript, Myrrha explains her taboo love for her father and begs to connect with the tree she believes is inside her. Nereid Thetis shapeshifts, in lines of poetry, from woman to "Fox/ flame across the backyard sleek and fleet as fire," and dozens of other forms, hoping to escape rape by Peleus. Callisto, Ursa Major herself, reveals the rage that powers the stars of her constellation and, in counterpoint, Medusa tells the secret of what turns those who look upon her face to stone.
Some stories hew closely enough to each other to feel somewhat repetitive. However, the fatiguing nature of reading multiple accounts of sexual assault also highlights the seriousness of the subject matter. MacLaughlin's stories are vivid, wrenching and urgent. Literary fiction readers and classics fans will not want to miss this gutsy reimagining. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads