Honk If You Love Aphrodite - Softcover

Weiss, Daniel Evan

9780980193589: Honk If You Love Aphrodite

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0980193583 ISBN 13: 9780980193589

Publisher: Pointed Prose Press, 2015

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To prove himself worthy of her love, a son of Aphrodite descends to earth in Coney Island. He encounters the mortal Stanley Short-Sleeves, who, after a reunion with two buddies, claims to want to make his way home to his waiting wife. Assuming the shape of one of these friends, Aphrodite’s son delivers Stanley from many perils, including the treacherous subway and the underworld beneath, a bewitching Voodoo dancer, a drug dealer whose turf Stanley unwittingly transgresses, strange women unaccountably besotted with him, and one woman he knows all too well. But the greatest obstacle to his homeward journey could well lie in his own divided heart. This swift, hilarious adventure, written in the epic style of Homer, sweeps the reader through late-night New York City, exploring the many faces of modern love.

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Review

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

Review

Savage Dan Weiss in kindlier, more poetic mode than usual, as the Gods come down from Mount Olympus to perplex and enchant base mortals. Abundantly funny, exhilaratingly cynical, such a deft and clever handling of language. Yet generous in spirit too - if this is the form the novels of the new Millennium take, half prose, half poetry, all vision, so be it. I'm happy (Fay Weldon ?Jolly, rollicking fun, told with gusto and a surprising sensitivity? Kirkus Reviews ?By the end his conclusions on the subject of love are heart-warming without being cloying? Fiesta)

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