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2008 Book Reviews

 

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

Rating:

***

 

(Recommended)

 

 

 

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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

 

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