“They have been here before. Another staircase. Another hall.” —Orpheus

reading this was like watching orpheus and eurydice, tale as old as time, like refracted light through water. still the same characters, but changed. distorted. in valente’s retelling, orpheus succeeds in bringing eurydice back from the dead, but it still leaves her in the same condition as she left earth: a corpse. she’s dead weight that orpheus lugs around from room to room, metaphorically most of the time (sometimes literally). i do think people who don’t read this and just see the premise would think, “oh, this isn’t them, not really. orpheus loves eurydice! eurydice loves orpheus!” and that’s true. on a surface level, i do understand why people would turn away from this kind of retelling (a marriage on the outs, a couple falling out of love), but valente understands their myth so well that she writes how skewed they would be, how their characters—them as people—wouldn’t be the same ones we’ve heard for millennia. valente understands that we know orpheus loves eurydice, and vice versa, because he turns around. this is just an exploration of a dim shade of what they would be if they got their “happy ending,” if they weren’t one of the most well-known tragedies to exist. UGH. last note is that valente’s prose has been, and continues to be, so fucking delicious. anyway. bye.