CUPID

This novelization of Cupid and Psyche has too little flavor and too much ego. The original plot is mostly intact: Psyche’s unearthly beauty entrances mortals and gods; Venus gets jealous; Cupid falls in love and so forth. An unseen narrator uses his own multiple marriages to claim authority about love and gender. He pontificates about “two things no woman can resist” and marriage being “different for women” because “[n]o matter how much a woman loves the man she is going to marry, a part of her is terrified.” In contrast, men are lustful and can “not withstand a woman’s tears.” Lester’s usual lovely gusto does appear occasionally: Gods feast on “ray-of-sunset soup” and “filet of dawn,” and the narrator personifies “the story” as a character “jumping up and down on my foot and pulling on my shirt.” However, such colorful tidbits pale next to thin characterizations and banal psychology. Useful for analyzing the original tale’s moral sketchiness, but a sluggish read. (author’s note) (Fiction. YA)