Natalie Haynes
No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes unfolds as a series of alternating vignettes in multiple first-person and third-person voices. Most of the speakers are women who tell their stories of use and abuse perpetrated by humans and/or gods. Some of the goddesses also speak in their voices as they bicker and scheme to help or thwart their favorites.
The first half of the novel focuses on the story of Jason and his adventures as he embarks on his quest for the golden fleece. Peppered throughout are stories of women who narrate how they were deceived, raped, abandoned, and/or died. Medea does not appear until nearly half way through the novel and only after Jason arrives in Colchis. She is completely besotted with Jason thanks to Cupid’s arrow. She helps him overcome a series of challenges until he is able to abscond with the fleece. In exchange, Jason promises to make her his wife. Theirs is a bumpy relationship which spirals downwards when Jason decides to marry the princess of Corinth. Medea tells her side of the story. Angry at the betrayal and the injustice, she plots her revenge against Jason by killing the princess, her father, and murdering her own children.
Haynes is to be commended for giving voice to female characters, some of whom barely receive a tertiary mention in Greek mythology. But because there are so many voices, Medea is reduced to one voice among many. Her rage and anger are presented in intermittent stops and starts interrupted by the constantly changing points of view. This leads to an unfortunate consequence: the fierce female rage we are familiar with from Euripides’ Medea is diluted. Medea appears as a feeble shadow of her original self.