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The beauty of myth is that it grows with us, that every generation brings its own perspective and interpretation to ancient stories to create something fresh, new and relevant to the concerns of a contemporary audience.
Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman Tell was inspired by the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd, in which a magician creates a woman out of flowers to be the wife of a cursed hero.
While the focus of the original myth is not on issues of consent or the ethics of creation, both these topics are of great interest to 21st century readers. The Patriarchy rears its ugly head very often on this podcast, and we felt Bar’s book provided the perfect opportunity to dig into things like paternalism, power dynamics and coercive control.
Honeysuckle is also, however, a love story, and we talk about the darker side of love, the obsessive lengths a person will go to in order to protect the one they love, even if they’re slowly killing them.
Bar Fridman-Tell is the author of the USA Today & National Indie Bestselling novel Honeysuckle. She has a BA in art history and an MA in English literature. (She gleefully wrote her thesis about Victorian vampires.) She is currently studying for a master’s in library and information sciences, hoping to stay in a library for good. She lives in Toronto with her professor husband and two very fluffy cats.
