Galatea by Madeleine Miller

Some summer in my teenage years, I picked up an old, crumbly paperback by Mary Renault and for a sunbaked afternoon or two was swept off into the world of Alexander the Great. Madeleine Miller's Circe conjured that same sense of transport and strangeness, electrified by myths and stories half-remembered, so when I saw short story by Miller on my library app, I clicked "borrow." Galatea is told from the first-person perspective of the beautiful sculpture brought to life through Pygmalion's obsessive love. His obsession—and sense of possession—is the shape of Galatea's life, and the story finds her confined in a remote facility, under the care of people who monitor and drug her between his visits, until she finds a way to escape. A familiar myth recast as a troubling, twisted tale of toxic patriarchy.