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Olympic Games: Zeus, Hera, and the Archetypal Battle of the Sexes
Four thousand years of philandering and there’s that cute little naiad he can’t forget. His neo-Olympian cult won’t stop howling at the moon. And Hera’s on a real rampage this time. Is Zeus out of his league? Let the Games begin!
Sometimes a fool’s errand is the only chance you get. With nothing left to lose, a bereaved fry-cook, a lovelorn hermit, a clueless delivery-boy, and a determined water nymph take on the gods. It’s a surprisingly fair fight.
Sometimes a fool’s errand is the only chance you get. With nothing left to lose, a bereaved fry-cook, a lovelorn hermit, a clueless delivery-boy, and a determined water nymph take on the gods. It’s a surprisingly fair fight.
234 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2004
37 people want to read
About the author
Leslie What
55 books13 followersLeslie What has worked as a charge nurse, low-income lunch room manager, bee-butt sucker at a health food warehouse, and tap-dancing gorilla. She is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a Red Army deserter, and is a Nebula Award-winning writer who has published in Midstream, Perigee, The Clackamas Review, Fugue, Asimov's, Parabola, Lilith, Vestal Review, The MacGuffin, SciFiction, and other magazines. and over twenty anthologies.
NEWS! Crazy Love (Stories) earns Starred Reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist and was an Oregon Book Award Finalist.
"Queen of Gonzo" What (Olympic Games) drags love out of its gooey, schmaltzyrut and takes it for a joyride in this exuberant collection of 17 stories. "Finger Talk" is a poignant take on unwanted pregnancy and cavalier men. "Babies" gives a Kafkaesque touch to a pregnancy that may or may not have been affected by pesticides during the first trimester. "All My Children" asks whether the provider of a sperm sample is legally responsible for the children that come from its use - and if he is, how does he pay for 10,000 college tuition fees? The 1999 Nebula-winning "The Cost of Doing Business" posits possibly the most incredible premise in the book: a love for others that is completely selfless and nonjudgmental. No matter how brief or long, no matter how bizarre, each tale in this collection grabs readers and demands they rethink how they see all the myriad forms of love.
-May 12, 2008 Publishers Weekly
An ace at the new weirdness defined by the anthology Feeling Very Strange (2006), What uses it to be creepy, polemical, and funny, all at once or in various blendings. These 17 stories progress from grim to laugh-out-loud ludicrous without ever derogating their common subject, love, though they do depict it as fairly insane. The opening stories, "Finger Talk" and "Babies," feature women in abusive relationships they don't want to change; that one is trapped in a gorilla suit and the other is, unbeknownst to hubby, carrying sextuplets leavens their dire circumstances some, but enough? "The Cost of Doing Business" is about a professional victim, whose clients must be able to afford her subsequent hospitalizations and quite adequate comfort between jobs. Things lighten up through the predicaments of a man who masturbated for science when 18 and at 49 discovers he has thousands of offspring, a man who realizes that work doesn't proliferate during vacation without cause, a nauseating senior who expects familial love although he intends to live forever, and others, until at last there is the hermit researcher's tale, from which we learn, through a vale of our own tears of laughter, why there are always hermits. Love is why, of course. Crazy!
Ray Olson ~July 10 Booklist
NEWS! Crazy Love (Stories) earns Starred Reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist and was an Oregon Book Award Finalist.
"Queen of Gonzo" What (Olympic Games) drags love out of its gooey, schmaltzyrut and takes it for a joyride in this exuberant collection of 17 stories. "Finger Talk" is a poignant take on unwanted pregnancy and cavalier men. "Babies" gives a Kafkaesque touch to a pregnancy that may or may not have been affected by pesticides during the first trimester. "All My Children" asks whether the provider of a sperm sample is legally responsible for the children that come from its use - and if he is, how does he pay for 10,000 college tuition fees? The 1999 Nebula-winning "The Cost of Doing Business" posits possibly the most incredible premise in the book: a love for others that is completely selfless and nonjudgmental. No matter how brief or long, no matter how bizarre, each tale in this collection grabs readers and demands they rethink how they see all the myriad forms of love.
-May 12, 2008 Publishers Weekly
An ace at the new weirdness defined by the anthology Feeling Very Strange (2006), What uses it to be creepy, polemical, and funny, all at once or in various blendings. These 17 stories progress from grim to laugh-out-loud ludicrous without ever derogating their common subject, love, though they do depict it as fairly insane. The opening stories, "Finger Talk" and "Babies," feature women in abusive relationships they don't want to change; that one is trapped in a gorilla suit and the other is, unbeknownst to hubby, carrying sextuplets leavens their dire circumstances some, but enough? "The Cost of Doing Business" is about a professional victim, whose clients must be able to afford her subsequent hospitalizations and quite adequate comfort between jobs. Things lighten up through the predicaments of a man who masturbated for science when 18 and at 49 discovers he has thousands of offspring, a man who realizes that work doesn't proliferate during vacation without cause, a nauseating senior who expects familial love although he intends to live forever, and others, until at last there is the hermit researcher's tale, from which we learn, through a vale of our own tears of laughter, why there are always hermits. Love is why, of course. Crazy!
Ray Olson ~July 10 Booklist
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 9, 2013
There seems to be a literary trend of late that involves taking the gods of ancient times and throwing them into a modern world. These once powerful deities have been forgotten and struggle to adjust to the mundane day-to-day existence afforded them in an increasingly secular world with little time for or interest in religion. As an early devotee of Edith Hamilton, one might assume that these have been heady times for me. Unfortunately, this genre has been kind of a mixed bag. There's been the good (Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Piers Anthony's older Incarnations of Immortality) and the meh (Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief and Marie Phillips' Gods Behaving Badly). And now we have the bad--Olympic Games.
This is a book that I wanted to love, but it fell short for me. To begin with, there is one fundamental problem with writing about the gods: in the original myths, they're two dimensional characters who only exist to act and react to events. Because the gods primarily existed to explain the natural forces, they were devoid of personality beyond what was necessary to explain their component in the natural world. That's fine for reading brief myths presented in summary format or stories where the gods appear occasionally to help or hinder a beleaguered hero. It's an entirely different matter when they become the focal point of a full length novel. In fact, Olympic Games began as a short story entitled "The Goddess is Alive and, Well, Living in New York City." I would like to find What's original short story as I have a feeling it would be a more successful read for me. As it stands, the gods in Olympic Games remain two dimensional, which may be traditionally accurate but makes for tedious reading. I did not care about any of the characters--not even the humans, who themselves remain two dimensional.
The story focuses on Zeus and Hera (in my opinion, the two least interesting gods, as Zeus seemed to only exist to screw anything with two--or four--legs and a heartbeat and toss around the occasional lightning bolt, and Hera only existed to bitch about it). So guess what they're doing in present day? Zeus is philandering and Hera is chasing after him. There's little new here. They occasionally encounter difficulty with modern day life, but only to inconsequential and humorless effect. Their powers are used primarily to beguile humans into doing their bidding and, in Hera's case, to constantly change her hair color, her body shape, her sandals, her wardrobe, etc. (a joke that tires very quickly as that ability is possessed by most mortal women and does not a goddess make). There's nary another god in sight as, during the last 1/4 of the novel, it's explained that the others succumbed to ennui (an explanation that should have been provided earlier to give context as to why the other gods are inexplicably MIA). This is a shame as the lackluster narrative involving Zeus and Hera could have been spiced up with the appearance of Athena, Poseidon, Ares, Aphrodite, or just the occasional demigod.
The novel is billed as a screwball absurdist romp, a la Christopher Moore, but there's little in the way of humor here. Sure, there's plenty of absurdity, but it's not particularly funny. There are some clunky and obvious one-liners. If nothing else, the novel made me wish that Christopher Moore would try his hand at this gods-in-the-modern-world genre. If you’re interested in mythology based literature, I would recommend any of the novels previously mentioned in this review or, hey, kick it old school and get a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology or revisit Medea, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, The Illiad, or The Odyssey. I think you would find any of them a more rewarding experience.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder and at Shelf Inflicted
This is a book that I wanted to love, but it fell short for me. To begin with, there is one fundamental problem with writing about the gods: in the original myths, they're two dimensional characters who only exist to act and react to events. Because the gods primarily existed to explain the natural forces, they were devoid of personality beyond what was necessary to explain their component in the natural world. That's fine for reading brief myths presented in summary format or stories where the gods appear occasionally to help or hinder a beleaguered hero. It's an entirely different matter when they become the focal point of a full length novel. In fact, Olympic Games began as a short story entitled "The Goddess is Alive and, Well, Living in New York City." I would like to find What's original short story as I have a feeling it would be a more successful read for me. As it stands, the gods in Olympic Games remain two dimensional, which may be traditionally accurate but makes for tedious reading. I did not care about any of the characters--not even the humans, who themselves remain two dimensional.
The story focuses on Zeus and Hera (in my opinion, the two least interesting gods, as Zeus seemed to only exist to screw anything with two--or four--legs and a heartbeat and toss around the occasional lightning bolt, and Hera only existed to bitch about it). So guess what they're doing in present day? Zeus is philandering and Hera is chasing after him. There's little new here. They occasionally encounter difficulty with modern day life, but only to inconsequential and humorless effect. Their powers are used primarily to beguile humans into doing their bidding and, in Hera's case, to constantly change her hair color, her body shape, her sandals, her wardrobe, etc. (a joke that tires very quickly as that ability is possessed by most mortal women and does not a goddess make). There's nary another god in sight as, during the last 1/4 of the novel, it's explained that the others succumbed to ennui (an explanation that should have been provided earlier to give context as to why the other gods are inexplicably MIA). This is a shame as the lackluster narrative involving Zeus and Hera could have been spiced up with the appearance of Athena, Poseidon, Ares, Aphrodite, or just the occasional demigod.
The novel is billed as a screwball absurdist romp, a la Christopher Moore, but there's little in the way of humor here. Sure, there's plenty of absurdity, but it's not particularly funny. There are some clunky and obvious one-liners. If nothing else, the novel made me wish that Christopher Moore would try his hand at this gods-in-the-modern-world genre. If you’re interested in mythology based literature, I would recommend any of the novels previously mentioned in this review or, hey, kick it old school and get a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology or revisit Medea, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, The Illiad, or The Odyssey. I think you would find any of them a more rewarding experience.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder and at Shelf Inflicted
December 31, 2019
A pretty decent Thorne Smith updating, from a woman's perspective. The subtitle is an accurate preview: "Zeus, Hera, and the Archetypal Battle of the Sexes." As is the cover art, by Michael Dashow. Starts out well, gets tiring in the middle, bravura finish. Zeus's summer camp for "adult" men is entertaining, but the heavy-handed satire drags down the story. The archetypes occasionally become recognizably human. 3 stars.
Another book that had been on the TBR list for years. My lightly-used copy was ex-Twin Falls, Idaho Public Library. Not a keeper.
Another book that had been on the TBR list for years. My lightly-used copy was ex-Twin Falls, Idaho Public Library. Not a keeper.
December 7, 2008
Since the beginning of time, Zeus and Hera have been King and Queen of the Gods: greatest of the Olympians and supreme overseers of mortal beings. This hasn’t changed, though the times certainly have. Thing is though, what is a god without anyone to worship them?
In the hustle and bustle of modern life, worship of the Greek Gods has all but disappeared, and many of the Olympians (all but Hera and Zeus, in fact) have elected to do just that themselves, simply fade out of existence rather than continue in an unworshipped state.
For Hera and Zeus, however, it’s life as usual: Zeus charms and philanders while Hera gripes and deals with the consequences of having such a husband. This is all well and good until, as prophesised by a street oracle, a flame from Zeus’ past comes back to wreak havoc on their newly re-established alliance.
Penelope was a water naiad Zeus seduced and trapped inside a tree back in the “old country.” When freed by a love starved hermit named Possum, her human presence alerts Zeus, whose interest is immediately reinflamed.
Meanwhile, Hera’s abandoned and genetically curious son, Igor, (half Greek God, half common bar beetle) mourns the absence of his ‘father’ in his life. Despite Hera’s, admittedly somewhat indifferent, wishes he sets out to seek Zeus out.
What will happen when all characters collide? Will Zeus accept his ‘son’ and, by extension, his long-suffering wife? Or will he go onto disrupt the happy life of Penelope and Possum, claiming what he thinks of as his own? And what of Hera? Will she learn to love her son as she should, or is everything simply lost in her unending task of reigning in Zeus?
Leslie What’s Olympic Games was an ‘almost’ book for me. By that I mean that the characters, story, writing, humour, everything, was ALMOST right. I enjoyed the book, but it left me with a feeling of falling short, as if it had potential that it didn’t quite meet.
Zeus was nothing more than a hedonistic womaniser and Hera a bitter, self-centred prima donna. While I accept that, as gods of a central idea of concept, these characters may become very focused, What’s interpretations were, in places, almost two dimensional. In all fairness, I am a long-time fan of shows such as Xena: the Warrior Princess and Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, whose visions of the gods are much more rounded; I already had high expectations.
Secondary characters (Possum, Igor) were a little more interesting, but it’s redeeming character was that of Eddie, the mentally retarded shop assistant, whose chapters were heart-wrenchingly honest. He made me laugh and he made me cry. For me, he saved the book.
I was interested to read that it was a short story that had been rewritten into a novel. That cleared up a lot for me. I think that, for me, it would have been more satisfying as a short story.
In the hustle and bustle of modern life, worship of the Greek Gods has all but disappeared, and many of the Olympians (all but Hera and Zeus, in fact) have elected to do just that themselves, simply fade out of existence rather than continue in an unworshipped state.
For Hera and Zeus, however, it’s life as usual: Zeus charms and philanders while Hera gripes and deals with the consequences of having such a husband. This is all well and good until, as prophesised by a street oracle, a flame from Zeus’ past comes back to wreak havoc on their newly re-established alliance.
Penelope was a water naiad Zeus seduced and trapped inside a tree back in the “old country.” When freed by a love starved hermit named Possum, her human presence alerts Zeus, whose interest is immediately reinflamed.
Meanwhile, Hera’s abandoned and genetically curious son, Igor, (half Greek God, half common bar beetle) mourns the absence of his ‘father’ in his life. Despite Hera’s, admittedly somewhat indifferent, wishes he sets out to seek Zeus out.
What will happen when all characters collide? Will Zeus accept his ‘son’ and, by extension, his long-suffering wife? Or will he go onto disrupt the happy life of Penelope and Possum, claiming what he thinks of as his own? And what of Hera? Will she learn to love her son as she should, or is everything simply lost in her unending task of reigning in Zeus?
Leslie What’s Olympic Games was an ‘almost’ book for me. By that I mean that the characters, story, writing, humour, everything, was ALMOST right. I enjoyed the book, but it left me with a feeling of falling short, as if it had potential that it didn’t quite meet.
Zeus was nothing more than a hedonistic womaniser and Hera a bitter, self-centred prima donna. While I accept that, as gods of a central idea of concept, these characters may become very focused, What’s interpretations were, in places, almost two dimensional. In all fairness, I am a long-time fan of shows such as Xena: the Warrior Princess and Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, whose visions of the gods are much more rounded; I already had high expectations.
Secondary characters (Possum, Igor) were a little more interesting, but it’s redeeming character was that of Eddie, the mentally retarded shop assistant, whose chapters were heart-wrenchingly honest. He made me laugh and he made me cry. For me, he saved the book.
I was interested to read that it was a short story that had been rewritten into a novel. That cleared up a lot for me. I think that, for me, it would have been more satisfying as a short story.
December 17, 2010
Olympic Games is a quirky modern fantasy in which the Greek gods are alive and well and living in New York City. (In fact, the book is based on What's short story, "The Goddess is Alive, and, Well, Living in New York City", first published in Asimov's in 1996.) Zeus and Hera live in the big city, still enacting the old story of Zeus's philandering and Hera's jealous rages, when something from Zeus's unfaithful past comes back to affect them -- a nymph named Penelope, once Zeus's lover, now his enemy.
Zeus and Hera are utterly wonderful translations of their old selves into the modern setting, and the other characters What introduces match Zeus and Hera in their vividness: betrayed Penelope; Possum, her new love; Eddie, the developmentally disabled stockboy who is destined for bigger things; and Alexander, the architect-turned-cook with an unhappy past. Olympic Games is funny and well-written, and a marvelous mix of ancient and modern.
Zeus and Hera are utterly wonderful translations of their old selves into the modern setting, and the other characters What introduces match Zeus and Hera in their vividness: betrayed Penelope; Possum, her new love; Eddie, the developmentally disabled stockboy who is destined for bigger things; and Alexander, the architect-turned-cook with an unhappy past. Olympic Games is funny and well-written, and a marvelous mix of ancient and modern.
April 14, 2008
Fun enough, but I got bored. It was having too much fun being sassy and cool. To be fair, I probably would have finished it if it hadn't been due back at the library.
December 16, 2008
Another fictional tale of what the Greek Gods would be up to in the present day. Gods behaving Badly is much better
July 22, 2012
Ehh, it was ok? I don't think I'll remember anything about it a few months from now.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews