Rebecca Finch, the protagonist, is a Romance novelist who is jaded when it comes to love; not only is this is hazardous to her writing career but it is damaging to the powers-that-be.  Aphrodite and her son Eros are being damaged in the age of romantic disillusionment and the loss of their acolyte, Rebecca, whose novels lift the hopes of the unlucky-in-love, is an embarrassment; on Mount Olympus the Greek God and her cherubic offspring decide to intervene in Rebecca’s love-life.

From the prologue, Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers is a witty and engaging read that I thoroughly enjoyed. Greek mythology fascinates me and I found the wry employment of the Gods and of Eros, the anthropomorphic explanation for a phenomenon, witty and clever; Eros calls Zeus “Grandpa” at one point and it is very entertaining to see the pettiness of the immortal dieties.  On Mount Olympus the Gods watch the mortals as if they are participants in a reality TV show with Eros accused of watching America too often and Aphrodite watching back video tapes as she cannot get a handle on DVDs. Rebecca and John Sterling, the loverinterest, were fated to meet and fall in love years earlier but never did … due to the drunken incompetence of Eros one New Year’s Eve (he had been drinking with Dionysus).  Aphrodite’s “workshop” takes the form of therapy sessions, sessions that she manipulates to bring together Rebecca and John. Aphrodite in the guise of therapist is often literal-minded and quips about never having met Socrates in person; I was particularly amused by this exchange with Rebecca:

‘I tell you, that little bastard Cupid and his arrows of mass-production have a lot to answer for.’

‘Eros, his name is Eros.  Cupid is a vulgar Roman invention.’

I was a little taken aback by how seriously she took her classics.

‘And he’s not that bad: lazy, yes, sloppy in his work, yes, and come to think of it a bastard, yes, but he’s a good boy really.’

On the surface Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers is a romantic novel with a comic and quirky premise (Rebecca also has an imaginary bully, Coco the bipolar clown) but it also has another layer that cleverly acts as commentary on the genre of romantic fiction.  Rebecca is a romantic novelist who debunks the illusion of romantic love and Cobbold can be quite self-deprecating and even derisive about the genre whilst, ultimately, defending it.  Her thoughts on Jane Austen (bottom quote) I concur with and I sought the Austenesque ending.

Favorite passages:

She was engrossed by the novel she was reading; I could tell from her changing expressions and the way she turned the pages with fingers that could barely wait for the eyes to catch up.

Words were dangerous things.  Once let out they took on a life of their own, pulling consequences along with them, reproducing, prompting reactions, making solid that which had been shadowy and only partially formed.  Words, once spoken or written, chased your illusions away.

But Jane Austen is no romantic, not really. She wrote about people falling in love and we know, with delicious anticipation, that the book will have what we think of as a happy ending: a wedding.  But most of her alliances are formed out of good sense as much as sensibility.  Back then, romance knew its place: as a passing diversion from the important issues like a home, raising a family, working, handing something down.  Romantic love is the icing.  The trouble comes when you eat the icing and throw away the cake.

What is your criteria for keeping books in your collection? For me, it is the desire to have my own personal library and my love of having books in a living-space; I’m a collector and it’s as much about the aesthetic as it is the content.  Conversely, what is you criteria for culling books from your shelves?  Do you enjoy periodically going through your accumulated to-be-read books and weeding out those that no longer appeal? I am quite fickle when it comes to being attracted to a book at a certain time, acquiring it and then later questioning why I wanted to read it in the first place.  On the other side of that, I am looking forward to spending some time with my books in bulk and unearth a book or two that I had forgotten about and now have the opportunity to read on a whim.

Yesterday I read this Guardian post on unreliable narrators.  Personally I love a good unreliable narrator, someone whose story you never quite trust, and have read 7/10 books cited as an examples with another -The End of Alice- glaring at me from my wish-list (I also love a novel shrouded in controversy).  The most memorable unreliable narrator I have read recently is Merricat in We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and I am surprised that she doesn’t appear on the list; saying that, Jackson does seem to be unknown this side of the pond and it was only via other bloggers (and a timely and serendipitous reissuing of her books by Penguin) that I discovered and loved her work.  Do you like a narrator who perhaps leads you a merry dance? I enjoy never being certain of what I have read, whether it played out that way or was a figment of the narrator’s overactive imagination or means of protecting themselves; its the fiction within the fiction that captivates me, the fully-constructed characterisation and nuanced narrative. Do you have any unreliable narrators to recommend?

Time for a crazy bibliophile confession: I HATE when an author or book title’s name is misspelled and it is one of my pet peeves in the blogosphere. I think that if you are going to the trouble of reading a book and writing about it then you should extend the courtesy to ensuring you spell it correctly.  I appreciate that not everyone has the time to meticulously write their blog-posts and certainly not to proof-read their comments but there are particular mistakes that I think are unforgivable … the one that has driven me batty recently is the erroneous spelling of Jane Austen as Jane Austin.  I have seen this countless times and it has made me see red.  You may think that I am nit-picking but this is Jane freakin’ AUSTEN we are talking about and not some new writer with an oddly spelled surname.  It is not an erroneous typo in my eyes but an egregious one that is tantamount to blasphemy.  I hasten to add that it is not just on blogs that I have seen this but across other media and in a BOOK! Okay, it was “Austinesque” as opposed to “Austin” but it’s a new conspiracy that even editorial staff are in on. Get it together, people, you are referring to one of the literary canon’s greats and the least you can do is know how to spell her name.  Did I miss the memo where the reading public conferred and changed the author’s name by deed-poll? On that note I will cease my ranting and off to re-watch the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for the millionth time.

‘You should have distinguished,’ replied Anne. ‘You should not have suspected me now; the case so different, and my age so different. If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated.’