Psyche in a Dress Book

But this is what I could not give up:
I could not give up myself

Psyche has known Love—scented with jasmine and tasting of fresh oranges. Yet he is fleeting and fragile, lost to her too quickly. Punished by self-doubt, Psyche yearns to be transformed, like the beautiful and brutal figures in the myths her lover once spoke of. Attempting to uncover beauty in the darkness, she is challenged, tested, and changed by the gods and demons who tempt her. Her faith must be found again, for if she is to love, she must never look back.

Publishers Weekly

Narrated in luminous free verse, Block's (Weetzie Bat) magically compassionate novel traces a girl's sinuous path through love, into adulthood and eventually into the fullness of her powers as a mother and a woman. The author deftly weaves myth and magic into scenes from contemporary life, viewed through a shimmering prism of the very hip. Block's shape- and name-shifting heroine starts out as Psyche, the passive star of her Zeus-like father's films ("My father had become a bull/ a swan/ a cloud/ a shower/ of gold/ so that he could have sex with other women"). When her brief and star-crossed love affair with tender Eros ends, a mourning Psyche metamorphoses first into Echo, foil for a modern-day Narcissus (a self-absorbed but ultimately wounded film star), and then into Eurydice, soulmate to an Orpheus whose modern-day incarnation calls to mind Kurt Cobain. As Persephone, the heroine lives through a dark period as consort to the ruler of a modern-day underworld until she finds respite with her mother, Demeter. Block brilliantly integrates aspects of the mythology, as when the heroine works for tyrannical Aphrodite (whom she does not know is actually Eros's mother) in a clothing store, and ants help her sort beads into little boxes. Briefly reunited with Eros, Psyche has a daughter, Joy, and later is transformed into a goddess at last. Haunting and heartbreaking, Block's novel once again demonstrates the mythical aspects of mortal lives. Ages 14-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.