Just Finished Reading: God’s Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips (FP: 2007) [277pp] 

The End of the World began with a chance encounter, on London’s Hampsted Heath, with a tree called Kate. Of course, Kate hadn’t always been a tree. She used to work in PR until she too had a chance encounter with Apollo and refused his offer of sex. Artemis wasn’t mostly annoyed about the tree thing or, to be frank, the offer and rejection of sex thing, it was the waste. After so long out of the limelight, so to speak, none of the Gods had that much energy they could waste on petty tree making. What they really needed right now was a cleaner. The house they all lived in was a wreck and it hadn’t had a proper cleaning for far too long – centuries maybe. But Zeus was dead set against having any mortals in the house. Then, as luck would have it, Alice arrived. Alice already knew Apollo, unfortunately, but she had no idea that a trick had been played on her by Aphrodite. What Aphrodite didn’t realise was that her trick had already gone wrong. Apollo was in love with Alice but Alice was already falling in love with Neil who worked in the same building she had previously been contracted to clean. As both Neil’s and Alice’s lives become more entangled with the ex-Gods of Mount Olympus, they slowly begin to realise that such encounters do not generally end well for the mortals in the mix. 

As usual, I picked this up in a bookshop offer because it looked different and interesting. It was certainly both. Because the premise is a little on the strange side (or ‘delightfully original’ as one comment puts it) it did take a little getting into. It reminded me at times of Douglas Adams in its humour and I smiled quite a lot throughout the first third or so. At this point I began thinking of this short novel as a bit of entertaining fluff. What I didn’t realise was just how good it was going to get and, looking back, how good this actually was from the beginning. Not only was it an interesting ‘take’ on the Greek Gods – that oh, so, dysfunctional family – but it was an equally interesting musing on the question of what happens to Gods when people stop believing in them? Another aspect of the novel I really liked was the unlikely relationship between Alice and Neil. Not only was it very well told (and at times painfully sweet) it also had a great binding effect on the overall story and helped to drive the story forward. Both Alice and Neil were honestly great characters and I really felt for their predicament. I was on the edge of my seat a few times when things got a bit rough and cheered Neil on as he struggled to become a hero. The Gods themselves were an interesting bunch. I’m not 100% familiar with all of the Greek myths but it's clear that, generally, the Greek Gods are not nice ‘people’ - except Artemis who I liked quite a lot and Athena who I could sympathise with at times. The only, small, warning is that there is a bit of moderately explicit sex (or sexual conversations) from time to time around Aphrodite, naturally, but that can be easily skimmed over. The book actually gets better as the story progresses and I thought the descriptions of the Underworld were quite fascinating. All in all, this was a read unlike any other in my experience and I can honestly say that I really, really liked it. Highly recommended for all Fantasy, Greek myth and/or offbeat humour fans.