Sirena

By Donna Jo Napoli
Read: 1998, October 2008
Rating: Provocative

I still remember seeing Sirena on display at our school library, when it first came out. I was perhaps in 6th grade. It was on a special shelf, for the library’s special reader program–those readers got first pick of the new titles and were supposed to review them. I begged to borrow the book, promised I would review it… and never did.

I don’t really remember what I thought of it at the time, only that I’ve always had a soft spot for it and over the years I’ve wished I could reread it. I was lucky enough to find it at the Princeton Public Library’s ongoing book sale. ($1 book sales, you shall be the ruining of me!)

The book is written for young adults, but I know I didn’t gain everything I could from it at the tender age of 12.

Sirena is a mermaid, a siren, from the myths of Ancient Greece. Odysseus and the other men sailing to and from Troy had to pass the siren’s island. The sirens would sing to them, beckoning the sailors to them, casting a spell no man can resist. Good men would jump overboard and drown, or the entire ship would be torn asunder on the rocks surrounding the island.

Sirena and her sisters sing because they are cursed, and must gain the love of a human man to earn their immortality. They sing their hearts out to save themselves–but only Sirena is horrified by the devastation that results. She cannot bear to do it again, and so she leaves her sisters behind, swearing that she would rather live alone than be a murderer. She finds an abandoned island and makes it her home.

The Greek hero Philoctetes is abandoned on the island by his shipmates, too wounded to continue with them. Sirena nurses him to health and a love grows between them. But Sirena is ever unsure–she doesn’t want to sing to Philoctetes, she doesn’t want to seduce him by magic. And what will she do with an immortal soul–if he can’t live forever as well?

There’s much more here than the ordinary young adult novel. Love. What it means to be a murderer, or a seductress. The horrible nature of a curse to love. Indeed, the cruelty of the gods themselves. There is a level of sexuality that went right over my head when I was younger, and I certainly couldn’t appreciate what it meant for Sirena to watch Philoctetes age.

A book I wish received more praise. It’s beautifully written, with no plot points that could be solved simply and quickly–Sirena’s dilemmas have no easy answers. Highly recommended.