How not to turn to stone from the ‘Gaze of Medusa’: A review of a novel by Lyubko Deresh

One of the most popular Ukrainian authors of the 2000s, Lyubko Deresh has written a new novel in which he describes the experience of war through the eyes of civilians. The freezing and petrification caused by a direct gaze at Medusa is seen in many characters whose features reveal its image. This could have been a novel about a hero returning home from war; what we see instead is a shadow that has been to the realm of Hades and now belongs to it. We invite you to find out how not to turn to stone from the gaze of Medusa, and why it is worth looking at Deresh’s novel straight in the eye.

As the plot of the book unfolds, we follow the lives of four school friends caught by the outbreak of the full-scale Russian invasion at the age of forty. One of them — Slava — becomes a soldier, is injured, and loses someone dear to him. He resembles not so much a fearless Achilles but a tormented Orpheus, ready to return to the otherworld for Eurydice. Another character — Yuzyk — suffers from not being in the army and laments to Slava,  for his approval, desperately wishing to hear that his old friend does not despise him. The Greek myth of Medusa slowly and beautifully intertwines with the experience of war. It’s not the myth of a monster that destroys with a glance, but of a victim.

“Gaze of Medusa. A Small Book of Darkness, by Lyubko Deresh. Anetta Antonenko Publishing, 2024 (Ukrainian edition book cover)

A hero returns from the otherworld

If there is a Medusa, there must be an ancient atmosphere. “The Gaze of Medusa” reads like the story of a warrior’s return. It’s something Homer might have written — not “The Iliad” or “The Odyssey,” but a hypothetical “Ukrainiad.” However, this is not a tale of triumphant return of an ancient warrior with his shield, but the emergence of a hero from the otherworld. The soldier Slava returns to Western Ukraine, to Lviv, but it seems his soul has remained at war forever. The young woman he fell in love with died there, and now Slava belongs to the war just as the heroes of ancient texts were meant to belong to Hades. His gaze is otherworldly. He doesn’t recognize his wife Solomiya as even a vaguely familiar human being. She is not his woman, and this is not his life. The character experiences total derealization. All the earthly things people ask him about or try to bring him back to no longer touch him.

Tropes of war literature

One of the four friends, Myroslav — a creative writing teacher —  is the character readers are most likely to interpret as Deresh. He shows that with the outbreak of the full-scale invasion, many people turned to writing, and they all write with the same purpose, building a new canon.

What is shared in this experience are not just war motifs — it is the specific images, identical plot changes, characters you easily recognize, and expected, desired resolutions. What could be called a new canon is, however, a special canon, one at the intersection of literature and a new religious doctrine. This is probably how a nation is born — as a community that someone must imagine for themselves.

It is interesting that Deresh, while writing a book about the experience of war, avoids these tropes. He does not describe the hero at war, the happy reunion of a man and a woman after returning from the battlefield, or waking up at 5 a.m. with the thought that “it’s begun.” His character reflects that these tropes give a sense of shared experience. In fact, Deresh’s text is crafted in such a way that a chapter about one character flows into the next character’s chapter. They catch each other’s sentences halfway. This is the author’s way to portray war as a collective experience.

Medusa is raped

For us, Medusa is a monster that turns everyone to stone. But she is also a woman, raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena, and for this, she is punished by the goddess. This image comes to the forefront in the novel. 

A conversation about war is also a conversation about individuals affected by it, particularly about people who have survived rape. This theme appears in the novel in a way we might not expect from a book about the experience of war. One of the female characters — Lesya — gets a Medusa tattoo because she was assaulted by a friend of her husband Yuzik’s father. It is a symbol with which women who share similar experiences unite.

Lesya experiences violence not from the enemy in the occupied territory, but in the relatively peaceful Lviv, from someone who belongs to her family circle. Her husband does not defend her, proving incapable of protecting the woman.

Meanwhile, her husband is Yuzik, who feels shame in front of Slava for the fact that his friend went to war and he did not. The man shows helplessness, as he cannot even protect his wife here in Lviv. Well, how can you go to war, Yuzik, if you can’t even hold your father’s friend accountable? 

Since the novel follows the form of ancient drama with catharsis at the end, this hero will be able to offer a bloody sacrifice to his dishonored wife.

Spoiler: At the end of the novel, we will see him carrying the head of Lesya’s abuser. The moment is not very realistic, and is —  like some other moments in the novel — mystical. We cannot understand whether it really happens or if it is one of the mystical-metaphorical visions that the characters must experience to heal themselves.

Fight, flight, freeze

As we all know, the most familiar attribute of Medusa is her gaze that turns everyone to stone. Petrification is another experience present in the novel. The Ukrainians are those who turned to stone under the gaze of Medusa in the experience of war. In other words, Deresh refers to psychology science, which states that in a stressful situation, a person has three types of reactions: fight, flight, freeze.

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The image of petrification under Medusa’s gaze is significant both in terms of the experience of war and its depiction in literature. In the novel “Ladder” by Ukrainian author Yevhenia Kuznetsova, the escape from war to a provincial area in Spain, and the very image of the province, is presented as a territory of waiting, a sort of limbo. In “Catananche,” Sofia Andrukhovych moved the action of the novel to the post-war period, freezing the war and most of the memories. It seems that the authors freeze in the face of the experience of war. Perhaps this is also because the narrative about it has turned into a single narrative, where all words have become shared, and writers find it difficult to overcome this trap.

Avoiding direct description is an opportunity not to freeze between the “poetics of checkpoints in the middle of deserted streets” and the “leitmotif of sirens in the prose of witnesses to the Russian invasion,” as Deresh calls them in his novel.

Narcotic revelation

In this novel, the old and familiar Deresh shows up, known to readers for his descriptions of his characters’ drug trips. In “The Gaze of Medusa,” the trip occurs at the end and becomes one of the ways to mystical experience and catharsis for his characters. The characters eat chocolate, a souvenir from abroad, that contains psilocybin. The drug element fits perfectly with the novel, as it allows the characters to delve deeper into themselves and experience a mystical trance. In world culture, narcotic substances serve as a guide to other worlds and a means to expand consciousness. In modern culture, we often see drugs as thoughtless entertainment for vivid sensations. However, under the guidance of a wise mentor, they can become an element of enlightenment.

In “The Gaze of Medusa,” the drug-induced trance is a way to confront one’s deep emotions, something like a psychotherapeutic session. It is an opportunity to thaw out and maintain contact with reality. Specifically, for Slava, this trance is a moment of return from non-existence, a confrontation with frozen emotions.

What do we have in the end? Deresh has written a good novel about the experience of war, avoiding clichés and depicting a mystical experience. His “The Gaze of Medusa,” like the recent novel “Catananche” by Sofia Andrukhovych, uses ancient mythology to allow readers to touch upon an extraordinary experience within utterly mundane realities. This novel is a kind of Perseus’ shield, through which one can look Medusa straight in the eyes and not turn to stone from her gaze.

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Translation: Iryna Saviuk

Copy editing: Joy Tataryn