Cupid: A Tale of Love and Desire -- Julius Lester

Psyche is the youngest of three princesses, a young woman of such extraordinary beauty that there are no words to describe her.  Though she doesn't want or understand the attention, people worship her as they would a goddess -- and it does not go unnoticed by Venus, the goddess of Love.  The jealous goddess sends her son, Cupid, to deal with the situation.

Of course, Cupid immediately falls in love with Psyche, and then the trouble really begins.

According to his Author's Note, Julius Lester originally meant Cupid: A Tale of Love and Desire to be about seventy-five pages long.  It was to be a simple retelling of the Cupid and Psyche story in the voice of a Southern black storyteller.  But, like Gerald Morris, as he did research, he discovered gaps that he wanted to fill and characters who he wanted to include, so the proposed seventy-five pages ended up more than doubling.

While many readers will find the storyteller's asides distracting, others (myself included) will feel that his voice enhances the story.  I enjoyed his personal asides (some of which, according to the Author's Note, are about Julius Lester and some of which are not) and his relationship with the story:

I could try to explain that, but the story is jumping up and down on my foot and pulling on my shirt because it wants to know what is going to happen to Psyche.  Isn't that interesting?  Even a story doesn't know how it is going to turn out because who knows what a storyteller will say once he or she gets going good.  Sometimes even I don't know until I hear the words coming out of my mouth.

His voice (on the page) is such a performer's voice that I could hear him speaking as I read, and I can easily imagine Cupid finding a home with theater geeks -- it seems like it'd be prime monologue material.  I don't do audiobooks, but I listened to the entire excerpt available at Random House, which I'm embedding here.

Romantics will enjoy it.  I'm not talking about fans of the little-r romance novels of Stephenie Meyer or Lurlene McDaniels.  I'm talking about teen Romantics-with-a-capital-R, who will get all twittery about passages like this:

I'm going to get philosophical for a moment since this is a philosophical novel.  In love, and perhaps only in love, are the finite limitations of self dissolved and we merge, not only with the beloved other, but with wonder itself.  In love, whether it is love of another, of music, art, or whatever, we belong to someone or something and are no longer alone.

It is very much "A Tale of Love and Desire", but it is also a coming of age story for both Cupid and Psyche, a story about letting go for Venus, a story about a boy who falls in love with someone of whom his mother doesn't approve and a story about the differences between love and lust, about sacrifice and conquering fear.  I admit that part of me would have liked to see Psyche kick Cupid to the curb and head off into the sunset, either alone or with Favonius the West Wind, but A) Cupid isn't all that bad, he's just got a lot of growing up to do, and B) that's just not the way the old story goes. 

Then again, if it's the storyteller who has the power...

Comments

[TadMack]

I'm so pleased you like this so well. I appreciate hearing the reading; maybe if that guy came and read the story to me it would have worked out better. I don't know -- it seemed like there was just too much of the narrator, and not enough of the story -- of course, there isn't that much story there, in mythology; it's all the power of the storyteller, as you said.

[Becky]

I just love this one. I love, love, love it. I didn't expect to. Julius Lester is hit and miss with me. But there was something about this storyteller, this story, that I just loved. I read the book and I listened to the audio. I think it is one of the best audio books I've ever listened to. I'm not really big into audio books, by the way, because I read faster than I listen. It slows me down too much. Add that with the fact that a bad reader/narrator can ruin the mood of the book...but this one is just right.

[Leila]

I'm the same way with audiobooks -- this is the first book in a long, long time that has even tempted me. I was so happy to find that excerpt.

Lester is hit and miss with me, too, and I hadn't expected to like this one as much as I did, as I'd heard complaints about the voice. But I ended up really enjoying it, hooray!

[cc]

A good one to pair with this (for? classrooms? bookgroups?) would be Robert Graves' Till We Have Faces, which is the Cupid and Psyche story from a different perspective. It's excellent, but mega-depressing.

[Leila]

Oh, yeah -- I've had that one on my shelf (or in a box somewhere) for ages. I'll have to dig it out sometime when I feel like getting depressed.

[Charlotte]

Till We Have Faces is actually by C.S. Lewis...well worth reading.

[Leila]

Oh, that's it. I remember buying it for a book group, but I never got to it. (The book or the book group. Oops.)

[Mairi]

Sounds like an interesting book- I have always been far too interested in retellings for my own good. And by Julius Lester, too- I'll not say he's my favorite author, but I like him well enough.

[cc]

Oops! Thanks for the correction, Charlotte.