Anne Carson / copyright: Peter Smith
Jessica Belle Smith recommends Anne Carson‘s Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (1998):
A classics scholar and poet, Carson has made a literary career of transforming ancient tales into modern language and landscape. Her recent Oresteia re-imagines three ancient Greek tragedies, and more than a decade ago, Carson updated the myth of Herakles and Geryon. The resulting Autobiography of Red is a genuine delight for readers and writers of fiction and poetry. The life of Geryon, the red-winged monster obsessed with his camera and a boy named Herakles, unnerves as the best coming-of-age stories do, coming so close to the ageless questions of self-identity and autonomy: He stood on his small red shadow and thought what to do next. Combining a poet’s precise language and a novelist’s understanding of plot and character, Autobiography of Red is a book to curl up with and emerge tickled pink and enriched by the final page.
