Honk If You Love Aphrodite

Daniel Evan Weiss' Honk If You Love Aphrodite confounds genres. Written in the style of Homer's Odyssey, this story of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and her son is really a picturesque novel told in narrative verse form, and, as such bears some comparison to Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate. Written in an exuberant, comically parodic style, Weiss' "fiction" re-imagines contemporary New York through the eyes of Aphrodite's son, who has been sent to earth on a mission of love. Arriving in "Khoni Island", earnest and determined to succeed, he decides to assist the mortal Stanley Shortsleeves in his quest for love. Their subsequent adventures as they take the subway, upset a drug dealer, take a taxi, etc. form the main action and comedy of the book. Here, Weiss shows a deft, comic touch as the god's condescending hauteur clashes with Stanley's streetwise, squirmingly embarrassed self-doubt. Entertaining and engaging as these characters are--imagine Homer written by Seinfeld--Weiss enriches the proceedings with many insightful glosses on the nature of love: instinct, passion, lust. If the immortal sees love as always imponderable, always problematic, this view is not so separate, or so distant, Weiss tells us, from the travails and intimacies of mortal love. --David Marriott


Genre: General Fiction