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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Gods
Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Imaginative Marie
Phillips’ debut novel, Gods
Behaving Badly, presents an imaginative view of what happened to the
Greek gods over the centuries. Phillips has the gang living in a run-down
London house, in some fear of losing their immortality since people no longer
believe in them. Dionysus runs a sleezy bar, and Aphrodite is a bored phone
sex worker. She convinces Eros to hit Apollo with a love arrow, and Apollo
falls for Alice, who cleans his office. The fun and imagination intensify as
the story unfolds. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 2, pp. 8-10: There
was a time,
thought Apollo, thrusting rhythmically, when sneaking an illicit bathroom
shag with Aphrodite would have been exciting. He scrutinized her as she
leaned away from him against the peeling back wall, one dainty foot up on the
stained toilet cistern, her toenail polish the only paint in here that was
perfectly applied. She was exquisite. He couldn't deny that. Simply the most
beautiful sort-of woman ever to have sort-of lived, though Helen of the
ship-launching face had given her a run for her money. Eyes (thrust),
hair (thrust),
mouth (thrust),
skin (thrust),
breasts (thrust),
legs (thrust)
he could not
fault an inch of her. Though this was hardly an achievement on her part. She
was the goddess of beauty, after all. But still, thought Apollo, sublime as
she was, did she have to look so ... well ... bored? True, Apollo was so
bored of Aphrodite that he could almost scream. His pride, however, demanded
that she not feel the same way. "Right, I'm turning
around," announced Aphrodite. "Okay," said Apollo.
At least he wouldn't have to look at that passively indifferent face any
longer. Aphrodite
detached herself from him and turned so that she was facing the wall. She
arched her back, pointed the flawless ivory spheres of her buttocks at her
nephew, and supported herself against the wall with her slender, elegant hands.
Apollo reengaged himself and resumed thrusting. Looking down at the back of
her head, her glossy black hair curling down over the alabaster slope of her
shoulders, he could almost imagine that he was screwing Catherine
Zeta-Jones. He wondered whether he could persuade Aphrodite to speak to him
in Welsh. Just for the novelty. Anything for some novelty. Apollo
wanted out. Out of Aphrodite, out of this bathroom, out of this house, and
out of this life. He was sick of London. The family had moved there in 1665,
when the plague was keeping property prices rock bottom and before the
destruction of the great fire sent them spiraling upward again. This had been
a typically canny piece of financial engineering by his half sister Athena,
the goddess of wisdom. At the time, though, he had foreseen that they would
never actually be able to sell the house that they had bought so craftily,
and he had tried to warn the rest of the family, but they hadn't listened. It
was true that he had been known to lie about his predictions just to get his
own way, and everyone knew that he didn't want to move to London in the first
place, but even so, this time he had been right, and he'd known it from the
start. It was putting the property in Zeus's name; that had been the problem.
But even he could not have foreseen what would happen to Zeus. "I
was thinking of redecorating my room," said Aphrodite, interrupting his
thoughts. "Again?"
said Apollo. "I
could do with a change," said Aphrodite. "I'm sure Heppy won't
mind." Heppy was Hephaestus, god of smiths and
Aphrodite's husband, as hideous as she was beautiful. Treated with contempt
by the rest of the family, he nevertheless did all the refurbishment and
repairs in the house. As they had been living in the same place for more than
three hundred years, that was a lot of refurbishment and repairs. Even so, in
Apollo's opinion, he could have done with spending more time on things like
patching up this damp, crumbling, leaking bathroom, which would be in the
interests of the entire household, and less on adding further unnecessary
levels of luxury to their bedroom every time Aphrodite had one of her
increasingly frequent whims. "So
what are you going to do this time?" he asked her. "More gold leaf?
Hang some diamonds off the chandelier? Get rid of the roses at last?" Aphrodite
looked sharply at him over her shoulder. Even her glare was calculated to be
sexy. "There's
nothing wrong with roses," she snapped. "No, I just thought I would
change them from red to pink again." She turned back to the wall, picked
up a passing cockroach, and crushed it between her thumb and forefinger. "Do
that more slowly," she said. Apollo
obediently changed pace. He thought of his thousands and thousands of years
of living with Aphrodite, thousands gone and thousands yet to come and that
was the best-case scenario. And she never changed. Never, ever. But sex with
Aphrodite was better than no sex at all. And none of the other gods would
sleep with him. If only he could get a decent mortal lover, someone like one
of his old lovers in Greece or Rome, who worshipped him and everything he
did.. . but he refused to let his thoughts stray in that direction. It was
too depressing. Things had all been so much easier in the years that they
were now obliged to refer to as BC. There
was a knock at the door, a distinctive grumbling thumping like the falling of
distant bombs. It could only be Ares, god of war: Apollo's half brother,
roommate, and, gallingly, Aphrodite's favorite lover. Apollo paused
midthrust. "Can
you get a move on in there?" came Ares's voice. "I've got a Start
the War demo this morning, and I need a shave." "Bugger off," shouted Apollo,
resuming his activity. "I got here first, you'll just have to
wait." There
were times I smiled while reading Gods
Behaving Badly, and other times when I winced. For a debut novel, this
was better than I expected, and the sheer flow of imagination brings readers
a lot of pleasure. If you’re not pleased, give Aphrodite a call. Steve
Hopkins, February 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the March 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Gods Behaving Badly.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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