The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods

by Maria Dahvana Headley

Gods won’t save you. Gods will break you. Nevertheless, you will persist. And become anew.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Mythology, Fiction, Feminism, Retellings, Romance

16 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 23, 2020

About the author

Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times-bestselling author of, most recently, THE MERE WIFE (out July 17, 2018 from MCD/FSG). Upcoming in 2019 is a new translation of BEOWULF, also from FSG. As well, she is the author of the young adult skyship novels MAGONIA and AERIE from HarperCollins, the dark fantasy/alt-history novel QUEEN OF KINGS, the internationally bestselling memoir THE YEAR OF YES, and THE END OF THE SENTENCE, a novella co-written with Kat Howard, from Subterranean. With Neil Gaiman, she is the New York Times-bestselling co-editor of the monster anthology UNNATURAL CREATURES, benefitting 826DC.

Her Nebula,Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy award-nominated short fiction has appeared on Tor.com, and in The Toast, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Apex, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Subterranean Online, Glitter & Mayhem and Jurassic London's The Lowest Heaven and The Book of the Dead, Uncanny, Shimmer, and more. It's anthologized in Best American Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as the 2013 and 2014 editions of Rich Horton's The Year's Best Fantasy & Science Fiction, & Paula Guran's 2013 The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, in The Year's Best Weird Volume 1, ed. Laird Barron, and in Wastelands, Vol 2, among others. She's also a playwright and essayist.

She grew up in rural Idaho on a sled-dog ranch, spent part of her 20's as a pirate negotiator and ship marketer in the maritime industry, and now lives in Brooklyn in an apartment shared with a seven-foot-long stuffed crocodile.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s the reality, girl, girlfriend, goddess, goddamn goner: You’re gonna have to get out of hell all by yourself.

this is lovely and anthemic, and despite all the cussin' and fuckin' (or perhaps because of them), this is a perfect story to give teengirls on the cusp of womanhood—a litany of the perils of being a female in love, with youth's tendency to elevate the object of your affection to godlike status, whether that god be orpheus, icarus, zeus, etc, reducing your status to a rapt spongelike receptacle to yer boys' questionable tastes, a shiny accessory establishing his desirability, an unacknowledged helpmeet in the accolades he receives, a lover ignoring his extracurricular conquests, left in emotional hells of your own making again and again until you learn to scab your wounds into educational marks of survival and come into your own godhood, disheveled but blazing.

This is the fourth myth, unwritten in the larger canon, but it goes like this: You will be the woman who finally walks back into the place everyone else calls hell, and you’ll stay there.

You will wander the darkness until you know every inch of it. You will be unexpectedly good at winter. You will not be lonely alone.

You’ll bed down in an abandoned underworld, gutting fish from Styx and cooking them over the fire you make of the books bad boyfriends bought you. You’ll blaze the Bukowski, and fling the Fellini into Phlegethon. You’ll melt down your old wedding ring, and forge it into a claw.

an excellent girlpower story whose message may not be the most original or revolutionary, but a lesson in self-worth is never unwelcome because love fucking hurts sometimes, even to goddesses.



read it for yourself here:

https://www.tor.com/2020/01/23/a-girl...

come to my blog!

[Fiona Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

You’ll fall in love again. You’ll fall out. You will not await anyone else’s version of salvation.

This myth will not be recorded, but it will be yours.

The start of this may not have been particularly startling, but it takes a turn into full-on invocation, and I'm now firmly of the opinion that Maria Dahvana Headley could ignite her own revolution if she so chose. (We can hope!)

Free here: https://www.tor.com/2020/01/23/a-girl...

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this a week or two ago and really loved it. Kind of a literary experiment, but it worked.

Headley’s writing feels really powerful to me, though I haven’t quite figured out why. I’m looking forward to more of her work in the future.

[Silvia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated the first half more than the second one.

Second person POV can be amazingly powerful, and it was, until it and its message became redundant in the way a lot of feminist writing (usually seen in poetry format) tends to be. It worked for me a few years ago but I now feel infantilized by it, and therefore find it annoying at best. Maybe it will work for you if this is the first piece of fiction you find that tries to do that, but it just didn't work for me.

[Phoenix2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods was an actual golden short read. The parallelization of the greek mythology with the relationship adventures of a young woman until she realizes that she is the only one who can make herself happy and complete, a goddess, was excellent and inspiring. The way this story was written was also beautiful. And, even though this one was a short story, the author managed to arranged the pace and to complete the story masterfully.

[Meagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good!!

[Leticia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very original food for thought!

[Dev · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mythology-inspired short story that also deals heavily with modern day sexism that manages to pack a lot of punch into a very small word count. I think this is something you have to be in the right mood for, but I definitely was and it hit very close to home.

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an original message, but one that, unfortunately, young women need to keep hearing.
Poetic writing.

[Alex Sarll]

There are plenty of retellings of myths which sprinkle in modern references to help point out the problematic aspects of the male characters, and initially this didn't feel like it was doing anything more than that (though I did have a blasphemous chuckle at the line "Zeus will still have an AOL account"). But before the end it's ascended into a wonderful prose-poem about love, and I do love prose-poems, and the poetry of lists, so I'm now fond of it after all, which I think may be exactly the point, or one of them at least.

[Tanya Gold · Rating 5 out of 5]

How had I not heard of Headley before her Beowulf translation? Because 😍🤩🤯

After reading Beowulf and this short story I now know I'm going to devour everything else she's ever written.

[Jens Raab · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unlike most of the other reviewers I didn't enjoy this story at all. It simply didn't resonate with me.
I'm fairly familiar with Greek mythology but even that ultimately didn't save this text (not really a story if you ask me).
I lost interest about mid-way through the text and was happy when it finally was over.

This is the second story of Headley's I've read. The first was the very short Astronaut which is absolutely amazing!
Whether you like this story, do yourself a favor and check out Astronaut: https://www.tor.com/2017/03/08/astron...

[Imani November Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

You’ll write your own books. You’ll make your own films. You’ll paint your own portrait. You’ll be the leader of your own band. You’ll fall in love again. You’ll fall out. You will not await anyone else’s version of salvation.


some books (or in this case short stories) come to you when you need them to. right now this was one. i needed something quick to read but i also needed something that said "you will be okay" and "you will be great" and "you will be brave".

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this but it felt like the author was trying a bit too hard to be clever and it didn't quite hang together. There's an interesting concept in here but it's buried under attempts to be cool. Lots of wonderful writing at the sentence level but doesn't function well at the plot level. Just read Circe instead.

[➸ Gwen de Sade · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You will not, in the end, be broken by this history of hell, these hurts, these old boyfriends and husbands and rapists and forget-me-nots.
You‘ll forget those fuckers, those fucks, those fields other than Elysian."


It's a gem, read it here

[Sasha Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was possibly the best piece from tor.com that I have ever read. It's like a short chapbook filled with prose about self-love and learning what you deserve, all wrapped up in a brilliant modern mythology retelling.

[Beige · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woah, this is next level stuff. Do yourself a favour and check out what this author can do with a mere 32 pages.

Read for free: https://www.tor.com/2020/01/23/a-girl...

[Sydney S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really my thing. I don't like cliche motivational speech type of writing styles. This was a very dramatic one. I'm giving it 2 stars for a good idea. I was really excited about the second person narrative, but unfortunately this didn't work for me.

[Rebecca Crunden]

You stand at the mouth of your own cave, looking out over your own kingdom. You step off the cliff when you feel like it, and you spread your wings and soar.

This was just awesome.

[Martha andrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una reinterpretación de los mitos griegos en segunda persona, que hace paralelismos con la misoginia y machismo moderno con la mitología griega clásica.
Lo AMÉ, llegó en un momento perfecto y necesario. Muy cortito pero con un mensaje enorme. SE TU PROPIA PINCHE DIOSA.

"You are still trying to learn how to give it up in the entirety, and you’re doing it with the rest of everyone, because hello heart, hello hope, this is how motherfucking goddesses of love get made. Out of smashed things and blasted things and things burnt and blistered, out of old bad knowledge and out of making your way through the holy impossible"

[JM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dug it. It was an interesting retelling of several well-known Grecian myths in a modern setting, where the central character of the story takes on the role of several well-known figures, starting with Eurydice in high-school, then Icarus' woman in college (don't know who that is, I don't think I've ever seen a version of this myth where he has a girlfriend or wife), then whom I guess is the nymph-naiad Aegina in her twenties, to finally become Aphrodite as an adult woman. The author definitely has a way with words. It was really good.

[Anna Evans Eklund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy hell-and-back, I needed to read this today. Can I get the whole thing embroidered on a throw pillow? Ugh. I'm adopting this as my manifesto.

Love is brutal and messy, and ultimately something only you can truly discover for yourself. It won't look like what you expect, but it will find you. Headley captures this perfectly.

[Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

He will learn how to drive, and you’ll find yourself sitting in the backseat while his best friend rides shotgun. He will ferry you to a field to watch the Fourth of July. You’ll be on your back on a blanket. There will be a rattlesnake. It will smile at you, and you’ll think, Shit. I’m a goner.

absolutely nothing is stopping this from being a force of nature.

[Baily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first myth: that your boyfriend from when you were fifteen will come and get you out of hell. He might come, but he won’t get you.

delicious! but the end veers too far into purple

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

forgot i read this

[Winterrose527 · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Zeus will still have an AOL account" is one of the funniest things I've read in some time.

[mazzy of silence · Rating 5 out of 5]

я знову знайшла оповідання, яке просто потрібно прочитати кожному. кожній. дівчинці, дівчині та жінці, і нарешті зрозуміти, хто тут боги і чому, пані

[Starr Baumann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, that is really something. 😭😭😭😭😭

[Yolanda Sfetsos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written and powerful story that's lyrical and cuts deep. It's also an excellent weaving of real life and the mythical lives of gods. About women looking for salvation, strength and belonging when all of this--and so much more--has always been inside themselves.

Very empowering. And fun!

It's also about love. How it ebbs and flows, how it can be the most wonderful thing in the world. Or turn out to be the most poisonous.

I love stories that work on several levels at once, and fill you with thoughts afterwards. And this tale is definitely one that lingers long after the last word.

But don't take my word for it, go and read it yourself.

[jenny✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my head Lizzo was narrating the whole time

They didn’t give you this knowledge. You gave it to yourself. You made your own heart, and you made your own mind. You are the divine result of crumpled receipts and pretzel salt, of expired condoms and forgotten phone numbers, of lipstick and longing, of hands opened and spread out, of dogs running and of trucks on the highway, of cheap champagne and of diner coffee, of address books thrown out the window, of paperbacks and of pregnancies, of crow’s feet and of silver streaks in the dark night of your hair.