Muti’s Necklace: The Oldest Story in the World
By Louise Hawes; illustrated by Rebecca Guay
Retelling old stories from the woman’s point of view isn’t exactly a new idea. Ursula Le Guin gave us a wiser – and more subversive – Eve than the Bible’s in “She Unnames Them,” arguably the definitive work of the “herstory” genre.
When such retellings are done well, I think of an old house that’s been rehabbed inside and out, adding windows for bursts of insight and fresh air, tossing out the musty carpeting of machismo and the stark furnishings of the male ego. (And I say that with great affection for the starkly furnished men in my life.)
Now, I never read the original version of this story from an ancient papyrus about a pharoah’s magician who salvages a girl’s keepsake. But Hawes’ retelling from the girl’s perspective feels like she took a few brazen liberties, adding some pluck and good luck where there might have been none.
Muti’s a serving girl, a commodity, a thing, who happens to catch the pharoah’s eye. Usually, that meant a berth in his bed. But this pharaoh wants her and 20 others like her to row his pleasure boat around the royal pond. Okaaaay … men have wanted stranger things from young girls.
But when her beloved necklace drops into the water, she’s toast. Or she should be toast, the way she refuses to budge. It reminds her of her family. Somehow, she gets her way.
There’s a piece I’m missing here. Sure, she’s unmoving. But that’s it. Her only action is no action at all. There’s some stamp of her little foot or lilt in her voice or gleam in her eye that’s moving the pharaoh to not snuff out her execrable life with one flick of the royal wrist. He’s attracted to her gracefulness, which is a wholly different attribute than grace, and offers to marry her, which she refuses and which I don’t for a second believe.
But I'm too much of a cynic. Offer this one to the rebellious daughter in your own household, if she can keep from drooling over the pharoah's brooding masculinity. Guay has a way with the human body without getting steamy, though Muti perches lusciously on the edge of womanhood.
Rating: *\*\
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