Galatea

Main Review:

With the spell of nicer weather coming in to gently remind us that summer is on its way, I’ve turned my attention to Madeline Miller’s recently released short story – Galatea. In many ways, I felt drawn to read it. Although pocket sized, the cover is just really beautiful, and its short size meant I knew that with a little bit of an effort I could get through the whole thing in a matter of moments.

Having tackled some of the bigger names of the Ancient Greek world already like Patroclus and Circe, and with Persephone allegedly on the way – I was quite surprised to see that Miller had opted for Galatea for her next tale. After the Phthian Prince and the Sorceress of Aeaea, the story of a statue brought to life by Aphrodite to bring joy to ‘her’ sculptor seemed to be an unusual choice. The opening scene, with the humanised Galatea being hemmed in by doctors and nurses is similarly distinct from her other stories. But from the outset, you remember that this is Madeline Miller and so she’s more than able to pack a surprising amount of depth to a story that’s barely 50 A6 sized pages long. With that said, Galatea does seem to expect a general awareness of the myth and it’s main story beats going in, with no time to explain itself fully because of its brevity.

Galatea’s irritation with her imprisonment is obvious from the very start, being constantly treated like a child and degraded by the medical staff. Especially when compared to Miller’s other protagonists, there’s a certain innate coarseness to Galatea that really serves to distinguish her from others. When it comes to her language throughout, she’s more than a little ‘rough around the edges’. Then again, if I was a statue brought to life by divine power and forced to live with a boorish man – I’d probably have a potty mouth too.

There’s a lot to unpack in the story about the idea of performativity, especially about performing gender. In her outro, Miller points out the obvious similarities to My Fair Lady and Pretty Woman, but as I read on, I was increasingly put in mind of Ex Machina – the Oscar Isaac/Alicia Vikander film about AI. Much like that film, if you’re anything like me you’ll quickly find yourself rooting for Galatea, and you’ll be 100% behind her as her plan to escape comes into play. The ending, though arguably very tragic (and very Greek as a result) has a real resonance to it that I’m sure I could read several times over and over and pick up different elements each time.

Galatea is a short book, so it only gets a quick review. But, fundamentally, if you like Miller’s other novels, you’re almost guaranteed to like this one. It doesn’t have the full magic of a novel-length Miller adaptation but it was never going to be able to given its condensed size. It’s still absolutely worth picking up though,

I’m hoping to be back very soon with another post. Until then – Happy Reading!