Rachael Mead’s review brings together two distinct books: Natalie Haynes’s novel No Friend to This House, which reworks Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece through a wider cast of voices, and Zoe Terakes’s collection Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers, which revisits five Greek myths through queer perspectives. They offer different routes into familiar stories: one expands the Argonaut tale beyond its celebrated hero, while the other reframes myth through queer desire, embodiment and contemporary experience.
Mead’s review was published by Scroll.in on December 15, 2025, and originally appeared in The Conversation. The comparison is between a novel and a short-story collection, not a collaboration or a single shared project. Its central interest is how each book changes whose experiences and desires matter in Greek myth.
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How No Friend to This House widens Jason’s story
Natalie Haynes’s fifth novel retells Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, but does not leave the narrative centered on Jason. As Mead describes it, the book gives space to women, figures usually pushed to the margins, and nonhuman witnesses—including the Argo, the guiding bird and the ram whose hide becomes the fleece. The story reaches back to Helle and Phrixus and continues beyond Jason’s return, broadening the frame of the quest.
Haynes draws on Euripides’ Medea and Ovid’s Heroides. Mead notes that Haynes translates the opening of Euripides’ play for the novel’s chapter epigraphs. The result, in the review’s account, is a sardonic, multi-voiced reconstruction that treats the myth as more than a sequence of Jason’s achievements.
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Medea is neither a footnote nor a simple heroine
The novel examines Medea’s choices while also revealing Jason’s treatment of her. That balance matters: Mead emphasizes that Medea is not exonerated. The book’s feminist attention does not require overlooking her actions; instead, it makes room to consider her circumstances and agency alongside the consequences of what she does.
What Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers retells
Zoe Terakes’s debut collection comprises five myth retellings shaped by the author’s queer perspective and Cretan ancestry. Mead discusses stories involving Iphis and Ianthe, Icarus, Eurydice, Artemis and Kallisto, and Hermaphroditus. Rather than treating these figures as fixed symbols, the collection brings queer desire and embodied experience to the foreground.
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- Iphis and Ianthe: Mead reads the story through a trans-masculinity lens.
- Icarus: The retelling explores homoerotic longing.
- Eurydice: She is presented with agency rather than serving only as the object of Orpheus’s quest.
- Artemis and Kallisto: Their story becomes a narrative involving migration and family.
- Hermaphroditus: This retelling is set in King’s Cross.
Some stories move between ancient Crete and late-twentieth-century or contemporary Australia. Mead says the collection also touches on migration and Australian racism, connecting mythic material with modern settings and social experience. Its mode, as the review characterizes it, is embodied, first-person and explicitly erotic; that erotic content will not suit every reader.
How the two books differ
| Aspect | No Friend to This House | Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers |
|---|---|---|
| Form | A novel by Natalie Haynes. | A five-story collection by Zoe Terakes. |
| Mythic focus | Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, expanded to include Medea, women, sidelined figures and nonhuman witnesses. | Five retellings involving Iphis and Ianthe, Icarus, Eurydice, Artemis and Kallisto, and Hermaphroditus. |
| Narrative approach | Sardonic and multi-voiced, with attention to political power and Medea’s choices. | Queer, embodied and explicitly erotic storytelling, including first-person narration. |
| Setting | The Argonaut story, extending from Helle and Phrixus to beyond Jason’s return. | Ancient myth alongside late-twentieth-century or contemporary Australian settings. |
These distinctions follow Mead’s descriptions and critical reading; they are not claims based on comparative reader testing. Readers drawn to a sustained reworking of the Argonaut myth may gravitate toward Haynes’s novel. Those looking for several queer reframings, with myth brought into contact with modern Australian life, may find Terakes’s collection the closer fit.
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Rachael Mead’s full review, “Thrilling new versions of Greek myths pulse with queer desire and feminist fury,” is available at Scroll.in. The review identifies Haynes’s publisher as Mantle and Terakes’s as Hachette; it does not establish current formats or availability.
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