This is my book club's August selection, and we will be discussing it tomorrow morning at 9:30 am. I just finished it, and wanted to jot down my thoughts before the meeting. (It should be noted that the Vaughan Public Library carries this novel as one of their Book Club selections, and as a result, we were all able to borrow this title from our local branch!)
I heard through the grapevine that many of the ladies haven't finished Gods. Some really didn't enjoy the mythological characters and references, and so they gave up early after about 40 pages.
Knowing that, I pressed on a little further, and to my surprise, I actually found this novel quite refreshing and very entertaining.
Here's summary: Twelve gods of Olympus find themselves living in
the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in an old London house--and none too happy about it. Times are tough for Gods, as no one really believes in them anymore, so they've had to get day jobs:
Artemis as a dog-walker, Apollo as a TV psychic, Aphrodite as a phone
sex operator, Dionysus as a DJ.
Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind. Nothing less than a true act of heroism is needed-but can these two decidedly ordinary people replicate the feats of the mythical heroes and save the world
This was a very creative novel. It was fiction, but I want to label more as creative "mythological" fiction. It reminded me alot of Tom Robbins' work...Extremely imaginative, and very unique. There is fiction, and then there is a leap of faith. Phillips takes the reader to the next level of creativity. Here's a link to her blog...She's a character! http://www.mariephillips.co.uk/
One reservation that I had with Phillips writing is that it sometimes relied too heavily on conversation, and I almost felt that I was reading a script at times. Not surprisingly, it has been picked up by Hollywood as a screenplay.
I heard through the grapevine that many of the ladies haven't finished Gods. Some really didn't enjoy the mythological characters and references, and so they gave up early after about 40 pages.
Knowing that, I pressed on a little further, and to my surprise, I actually found this novel quite refreshing and very entertaining.
Here's summary: Twelve gods of Olympus find themselves living in
the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in an old London house--and none too happy about it. Times are tough for Gods, as no one really believes in them anymore, so they've had to get day jobs:
Artemis as a dog-walker, Apollo as a TV psychic, Aphrodite as a phone
sex operator, Dionysus as a DJ. Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind. Nothing less than a true act of heroism is needed-but can these two decidedly ordinary people replicate the feats of the mythical heroes and save the world
This was a very creative novel. It was fiction, but I want to label more as creative "mythological" fiction. It reminded me alot of Tom Robbins' work...Extremely imaginative, and very unique. There is fiction, and then there is a leap of faith. Phillips takes the reader to the next level of creativity. Here's a link to her blog...She's a character! http://www.mariephillips.co.uk/
One reservation that I had with Phillips writing is that it sometimes relied too heavily on conversation, and I almost felt that I was reading a script at times. Not surprisingly, it has been picked up by Hollywood as a screenplay.
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