L’Esprit de L’Escalier

This is a strange, strange story. It revisions the Orpheus/Eurydice myth in ways I never imagined, placing it in modern times and yet still anchored in the ancient tale. I don’t like to use the term tour de force very often, but, really, I don’t think there’s any way this story isn’t one. It’s utterly unique and I wish I liked it more, but there’s a distance here I had trouble overcoming—perhaps it’s because I’m not as familiar with the myths as the author, at least not enough to get all the cleverness that I know is in this story. For someone without even a clue about the myth, this story must be unfathomable.

Best read after some passing knowledge of Greek mythology, this is a modern retelling of the Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, with a twist. In this version, Orpheus does rescue Eurydice from Hades and now has to live with the consequences of his actions. For Eurydice is still, for all practical purposes, a dead person but now in the world of the living.

That causes 'complications', like the constant decay that occurs around her that can only be kept at bay by constant cleaning and disinfecting of her and the surroundings. It also doesn't help that their modernized Greek mythological relatives, from Apollo onwards, visit, asking (or not) about her and when Orpheus is going to release more music that he is famous for writing. In the end, it may be all too much for them to take.