Matthew Anghelos March

The essence of this book is understanding Medusa (and many other figures in Greek mythology) through the lens of the "devouring mother" archetype. The author spends a lot of time setting up definitions and patterns and first principles, which made me impatient by the time I got to the meat of the text. Even within the discourse about various narratives and their relevance to human behavior, there were a lot of expository tangents that seemed unnecessary and frankly, patronizing.
A lot of the takeaways that I think I was supposed to take from the book also seemed fairly trite, although I found parts of the author's reasoning interesting. You'd probably enjoy those parts more if you were new to and curious about human psychology, think books like Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
All in all, an interesting insight into the author's interests and processing but there are tons of great books out there for Greek mythology or the philosophy of human nature or even personal memoirs. I'd recommend starting there and coming back to this book if you'd like some breadth in your reading.
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